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RUSSELL SAGE
FOUNDATION
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER
MAKERS
BY
MARY VAN KLEECK
ti
SECRETARY COMMITTEE ON WOMEN'S WORK
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
NEW YORK
SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC,
MCMXIII
H*«#?
COMMITTEE ON WOMEN'S WORK OF THE
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
Henry R. Seager, Chairman
Miss Lilian Brandt
Samuel McCune Lindsay
Mrs. Henry R. Seager
Antonio Stella, M.D.
Miss Ellen J. Stone
Lawrence Veiller
Mrs. Lawrence Veiller
Copyright, 191 3, by
The Russell Sage Foundation
D TROW PRESS
NBW TORS
PREFACE
THIS book describes the results of an investi-
gation made by the Committee on Wom-
en's Work of the Russell Sage Founda-
tion, and is the second in a series of studies of the
condition of women's work in important trades in
New York City. While the inquiry was local in
scope, the facts discovered are national in their
significance. New York produces three-fourths of
all the artificial flowers made in the United States.
The development of the industry in any other
section of the country will depend on the labor
standards maintained in the city where it is now
so largely concentrated. Furthermore, the trade
is a concrete illustration of large industrial prob-
lems— seasonal work, child labor, lack of skill,
the home-work system — which are common to
many occupations in many communities. Inten-
sive studies of the conditions in one trade in one
city will throw light on conditions in other trades
in other cities. Efforts to solve the problem in
one locality will stimulate action in other sections
of the country.
The series of studies of which this investigation
of artificial flower makers is a part is based on
first-hand information secured from employers and
workers. Attention was focused purposely not on
271401
PREFACE
trade prosperity, value of product, or profits to
investors, but on the wellbeing of the girls em-
ployed, in so far as it could be measured in wages,
hours of labor, regularity of employment, oppor-
tunity to acquire skill, chance to advance, and
the conditions of living made possible by the earn-
ings received. The scope of the investigation is
shown in detail in the four record cards reproduced
in the Appendix.* The first contains facts about
the worker's industrial history and living condi-
tions, such as her relationship to the head of the
household in which she lives, her age and birth-
place, and a chronological record of positions held,
with the name and address of each firm, the kind
of work done by her, weekly wages, means of
securing the position, reason for leaving, and loss
of time through unemployment. The facts about
living conditions include nationality of father and
mother, number of children at home, other wage-
earners in the family, the number of rooms in
which they live, rent, and the proportion of her
earnings which the girl contributes to her home.
The second card contains facts secured from
a worker about the factory in which she was
working. Often reports were obtained from sev-
eral girls employed in the same factory. The third
card shows the record of the investigation of a
factory. It is filed with the cards containing re-
ports from the girls, thus bringing together for com-
parison all the information secured from workers
* See pages 228-235.
vi
PREFACE
and employer concerning each place of employ-
ment covered in the inquiry. Both the second
and third cards include data regarding the proc-
esses of work carried on by women, wages, oppor-
tunities for learners, seasons, hours of labor, over-
time, home work, and sanitary conditions in the
workroom.
The fourth record used in the investigation pro-
vided information about home workers — their
work, earnings, and living conditions, and the
employment and wages of members of the family
at work in other occupations. When a flower
maker employed in a factory was a member of a
family of home workers all four cards were used.
Names of workers were secured from social
settlements and other philanthropic organizations,
public evening schools, and fellow workers or
friends of the girls.* In the investigation of home
* Sources of Names of Flower Makers in the Shops:
Richmond Hill House 68
Other settlements, girls' clubs, etc. (College Settlement,
Greenwich House, Henry Street Settlement, Downtown
Ethical Society, Council of Jewish Women, Girls' Friendly
Society, Educational Alliance) 45
Other organizations (Alliance Employment Bureau, Child
Welfare Exhibit, Protestant Episcopal Mission Church,
Consumers' League, International Institute of the Young
Women's Christian Association) 11
Evening schools 51
Other schools (Manhattan Trade School for Girls, public
school teacher) 7
Through other shop and home workers visited ... 45
Found by visitors 17
244
Of these 244 names of workers, records were secured from 174,
while the remaining 70 were no longer flower makers, could furnish
only inadequate information, or could not be found.
vii
PREFACE
workers,* a group of families were interviewed
who had been visited in 1907 in an investiga-
tion of child labor in tenements in New York.f
Comparison of the records secured in these two
investigations gave added value to the more
recent data. More than 980 visits were made
during the course of the present investigation, 591
to workers in their homes, and 391 to factories to
interview employers. It is the practice of our
investigators to have at least two interviews in
the home of a worker; first, in the daytime with
her mother or some other member of the house-
hold, and second, in the evening with the worker
after she gets home from the factory. Records
were secured of 174 shop workers, 114 artificial
flower factories, and 1 10 families of home workers.J
* Sources of names of Home Workers on Artificial Flowers:
Records of investigation of Child Labor in New York City
Tenements, 1907, revisited in 1910 54
Richmond Hill House, a social settlement in the Italian
district 14
Other organizations (Consumers' League, Charity Organi-
zation Society) 6
Evening schools 1
Shop workers whose families made flowers at home . . 20
Found by visitors 55
150
From this list of 150 names, records were secured from 1 10 home
workers, while the other 40 families were no longer making flowers
at home, or could not be found.
t This study had been made under the auspices of the College
Settlements Association in cooperation with the Child Labor Com-
mittee, local and national, and the Consumers' League, local and
national. For results of the study see Van Kleeck, Mary: Child
Labor in New York City Tenements, Charities and the Commons,
XIX: 1 405- 1 420 (January 18, 1908).
% In addition, records were secured of 12 workers employed in
fancy feather shops, four in ostrich feather factories, and three home
workers in the ostrich feather trade.
viii
PREFACE
All the shops which we could find in Manhattan
were visited, including both independent factories
and departments of establishments that combined
more than one branch of the millinery industry.
These shops employed 5,240 workers, and the
interviews with employers, forewomen, and others
afforded a thorough basis of information for the
intensive case study of girls employed in the
trade.
The determination of the number of cases which
should be investigated in order to make the study
thorough is a matter of judgment, and depends
largely upon the character of the occupation. A
representative group illustrative of every impor-
tant phase of labor conditions in the trade must
be studied. In a complex industry, in which
changes are rapid and methods differ radically in
different factories, the number of case studies nec-
essary to insure representative data will be larger
than in an occupation in which machinery is not
used, and where processes are more or less similar
in all establishments. In every investigation of
this kind, the time arrives when the reports of
field workers begin to repeat facts already learned,
and when each record contains less new informa-
tion than that secured during the first interviews.
When the repetition on all important points has
been frequent enough to constitute corroborative
evidence, it is time to apply objective tests to the
data at hand to determine whether the field work
may safely be terminated or whether more data
ix
PREFACE
must be secured. Census figures regarding wages,
factory inspectors' reports concerning hours of
work, information found in trade journals, and
advertisements for workers published in daily news-
papers, afford corroboration of the reliability of
statements made in interviews. No a priori judg-
ment of the numbers to be studied can be relied
upon.
The preliminary field work in this investigation
was begun in the spring of 1910. Interviews with
workers were continued until the summer of 19 12.
The investigation was made simultaneously with
other investigations of women at work in New
York, and constant comparison with conditions
in other occupations made possible a sounder inter-
pretation of results than would otherwise have
been possible. The investigators who took part
in the field work were Miss Louise C. Odencrantz,
Miss Alice P. Barrows, Miss Elizabeth L. Meigs,
and the writer, who directed the inquiry. To
Miss Odencrantz we are indebted also for the
compilation of statistics. The comparative study
of conditions of employment in the artificial flower
trade in Paris was made by Miss Elizabeth S.
Sergeant. Before leaving New York, Miss Ser-
geant accompanied one of our investigators in
some of her visits, and thus was enabled to seek in
Paris information comparable with facts already
secured in New York. It should be added that in
order to have any errors detected and to secure
the benefit of criticisms by the trade, we sub-
PREFACE
mitted the manuscript to an employer and to a
flower maker of many years' experience, who con-
firmed the accuracy of the facts presented in the
study.
XI
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface .
List of Illustrations
List of Tables .
I . The Artificial Flower Trade .
II. Workers in the Shops
III. The Seasons and Unemployment .
IV. Wages and Home Responsibilities .
V. A Group of Home Workers . . /
VI. The Flower Trade and the Law .
VII. The Artificial Flower Trade in Paris
VIII. The Training of Flower Makers .
IX. Summary
PAGE
v
xv
xvii
I
23
40
58
90
118
144
191
213
APPENDICES
A. Record Cards Used in the Investigation . . . 227
B. Opinion of the Supreme Court of New York on the
Fifty-four Hour Law 236
C. Law Enacted March, 19 13, Prohibiting Night Work
for all Women 246
D. Society for Apprentices, Paris, France . . . 247
Index 253
XIII
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Photographs by Lewis W. Hine
FACING
PAGE
Finishing a Rose Frontispiece
A Feather Factory 12
Making Roses, Piece Work 12
Making Hearts for Roses 24
Goffering Rose Petals 24
A Corner of a Large Broadway Factory .... 34
Branching Roses 34
A Cutter with Heavy Hammer 46
Coloring the Petals 46
A Building which Houses Three Flower Factories . 56
Once a Residence, now a Flower Factory . . -56
Making Foliage 68
Pressing Petals 68
Goffering and Pressing .80
Arranging Flowers and Leaves 80
A Home Worker carrying Violets to the Factory in
School Hours 92
Delivering Flowers made at Home 92
All the Family Work 100
Flower Making after School 100
Child Toilers who work more regularly than their Father 1 12
Carrying Flowers from Home to Factory . . . .112
A Former Dwelling House containing Two Factories . 120
Feather Makers 120
Inflammable Material is hung near Unguarded Gas Jets. 130
An Attic Workroom 130
xv
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PACING
PAGE
A Dark and Dilapidated Workroom 143
Carrying Home the Petals to make Flowers . . .143
Crimping Petals 152
A Workroom in a One-Time Residence, New York . .152
Rose Makers, New York 160
Preparing the Petals, New York 160
A Learner Bringing Lunches to the Workroom . . 192
The Processes of Feather Making . . .* .192
Making Willow Plumes 208
Rose Making and Branching 208
xvi
LIST OF TABLES
TABLE PAGE
i. The artificial flower and feather making industry of
the United States 4
2. Ages of women employed in all manufacturing indus-
tries, in artificial flower making, and in other speci-
fied industries, New York City, 1900 ... 25
3. Nativity of parents of women employed in artificial
flower making, New York City .... 29
4. Women wage-earners by nativity of parents and gen-
eral occupations. New York City, 1 900 . 31
5. Length of busy season of year in artificial flower
shops 41
6. Length of slack season of year in artificial flower
shops 42
7. Month of beginning of busy season in artificial flower
shops 45
8. Month of ending of busy season in artificial flower
shops . 45
9. Length of time for which women were employed in
latest positions in artificial flower trade ... 46
10. Reasons for leaving positions in artificial flower shops,
as stated by artificial flower makers . . 49
11. Time lost in the year preceding date of interview
from all causes by women employed in artificial
flower making 50
12. Time lost in the year preceding date of interview be-
cause of slack season, by women employed in arti-
ficial flower making 51
13. Artificial flower shops, by maximum weekly wages
paid to women 59
xvii
LIST OF TABLES
TABLE PAGE
14. Women employed in artificial flower shops, by maxi-
mum weekly wages paid to women in the shops in
which they were employed 59
1 5. Weekly earnings of men and women employed in the
artificial flower and feather making industry, and
of women employed in all manufacturing indus-
tries, United States, 1905 61
16. Weekly wages of women employed in artificial flower
making by years of employment in the trade . 65
17. Weekly wages of Italian women and of women of
other nationalities employed in flower making, by
years of employment in the trade .... 69
18. Approximate yearly income of women employed in
artificial flower making who had been wage-
earners not less than one year . . . 71
19. Monthly rent paid by families of women employed
in artificial flower making 84
20. Ages of home workers in families making artificial
flowers at home 100
21. Ages and grades in New York public schools of chil-
dren making artificial flowers at home and also
attending school 102
22. Weekly earnings of families from home work on arti-
ficial flowers, by number of home workers in each
family 106
23. Occupations of fathers in families doing home work
on artificial flowers 113
24. Length of residence in the United States of foreign-
born parents in families making artificial flowers
at home 115
25. Daily hours of work, when not working overtime, of
women employed in artificial flower shops . .124
26. Hours at which women employed in artificial flower
shops began work 124
27. Hours at which women employed in artificial flower
shops left work when not working overtime . .125
xviii
LIST OF TABLES
TABLE PAGE
28. Length of noon recess of women employed in arti-
ficial flower shops 126
29. Weekly hours of work, when not working overtime,
of women employed in artificial flower shops . 127
30. Violations in artificial flower establishments of laws
restricting the employment of women and children 133
31. Persons per room in families making artificial flowers
at home 139
32. Yearly earnings of 85 Parisian women working at
home alone, on three specialties in artificial
flowers 172
33. Daily earnings in the busy season of 79 Parisian
women working at home alone on three specialties
in artificial flowers 173
34. Daily hours of work of Parisian home workers on
artificial flowers 177
35. Artificial flower shops employing women as learners,
by weekly wages of learners 199
36. Age at leaving school of women employed in artificial
flower making 203
xix
CHAPTER I
THE ARTIFICIAL FLOWER TRADE
IN the making of a flower the hand worker has
no mechanical rival. No inventor has been
able to harness electricity or steam to any
instrument which can reproduce the deft twist of
the skilled rose maker's fingers, or the discrimi-
nating touch of the worker who tastefully groups
together leaves and finished flowers. The nature
of the product, the absence of machinery, and
as a result the lack of change in fundamental
processes, make this industry unique among the
important wage-earning pursuits of women. Never-
theless, even without machines, which are com-
monly considered the prime factors in producing
industrial revolution, the artificial flower trade in
New York has not escaped industrial changes.
It is today not a handicraft but a factory industry
in which many evils of the factory system have
robbed the occupation of its artistic possibilities.
Flower making as an art has been practiced in
Europe for nearly two centuries. Its exercise does
not belong to any one people, although the indus-
try has now become associated chiefly with the
French. But from early times the Romans and
Egyptians, as well as the Chinese, had made arti-
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
ficial flowers out of various precious materials,
and in more modern days the people of tropical
islands have made them in quaint and formal
designs out of tiny, delicately colored shells and
feathers. Seafaring men in the days of the West
and East India trade in this country used to bring
these shell and feather flowers home to their fam-
ilies in glass-covered boxes, as New England par-
lors (and attics) can still bear testimony. It is
said that Italy introduced the art of flower making
into France, and from thence fleeing Huguenots
carried it across the channel to England. It was
through French immigrants, too, that the art was
brought to this country.
In an article on this trade, its introduction here
is thus described: * "It was necessary that these
strangers should live, and one of the first industries
they took up was artificial flower making. We
had at that time few greenhouses, and those which
existed contributed very little to the daily supply
of the citizens. But artificial flowers are permanent,
lasting a year or so if required, and they serve
as cheap decorations for ladies' hats and bonnets. f
For the same purpose feathers were used, and it
became the custom to unite the two industries in
* Depew, C. M.; One Hundred Years of American Commerce,
Vol. II, p. 671. New York, D. O. Haynes and Co., 1895.
t In a letter dated June 2, 1799, Jane Austen in England wrote,
"Flowers are very much worn and fruit is still more the thing.
Elizabeth has a bunch of strawberries, and I have seen grapes, cher-
ries, plums, and apricots." — Austen, Jane: Letters. Edited by Ed-
ward, Lord Brabourne. Vol. I, p. 212. London, Richard Bentley
and Son, 1884.
THE ARTIFICIAL FLOWER TRADE
the same shop. As long ago as 1840 there were
10 manufacturers in this line in New York,
T. Chagot being the chief. He was an importer
as well as a manufacturer, his place being at 24
Maiden Lane. The others were nearly all in
William Street. In 1847 the number had in-
creased to 24."
From that time the trade has grown in this
country, but official statistics showing its history
are very meager and unsatisfactory. The union
of feather making with flower making is still a
marked characteristic of the industry, and the
two are combined in census figures. In 1850,
according to the recent official report on the
history of women in industry, the number of
women employed in these two allied occupations
was 372.* In 1870, 1,114 women were recorded
as flower and feather makers. The figures for
the census years from 1880 to 19 10 are given in
Table 1 .
An interesting point regarding the comparative
importance of the trade in 1900 and 1905, was sug-
gested in the census of 1905 in which the state-
ment was made that the artificial flower and
feather trade seemed to show "a decreased pro-
duction between the two census periods" (1900
and 1905); that it was "possible that the de-
crease was caused by a reduced demand for these
* Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-earners in the
United States. Vol. IX, History of Women in Industry in the United
States, p. 253. U. S. Senate document No. 645.
3
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
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THE ARTIFICIAL FLOWER TRADE
goods." It will be noted that the number of
establishments had fallen from 224 in 1900 to 21 3
in 1905, value of products from $6,293,235 to
$5,246,822, and the number of women employed
from 4,191 to 3,545. An alternative interpreta-
tion, given in the same report, however, was that
possibly a large quantity of this class of goods was
included under the head of "millinery and lace
goods/' Thus the apparent decrease in flower
and feather making during the five years between
1900 and 1905 may have been due to a change in
the method of counting rather than to an actual
change in trade conditions.
One enthusiastic employer whose father before
him had been in the business all his life, declared
that the flower trade was "the coming industry
of America. " Whether or not so great a degree
of enthusiasm is justified, this investigation of the
trade in New York does not indicate that it is
declining, for the records of the flower factories
visited show that in the busy season nearly 6,000
women are employed in flower making alone, not
counting the feather makers in the same estab-
lishments, nor the flower makers who work in the
tenements. Furthermore, in 19 10 factory inspec-
tors * visited 479 flower and feather factories in
Greater New York, which employed 7,292 women
and 1,231 men, while United States census enu-
merators recorded the total number of wage-
* New York State Department of Labor. Report of Bureau of
Factory Inspection, 19 10, p. 321.
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
earners in these two trades in 1 910 as 10,016.*
These figures indicate growth rather than decrease
in the importance of this two-fold industry. Nor
are these data merely local in their significance.
New York is the most important center of flower
and feather making in the United States, and
conditions there are a good index of the trade
throughout the country.
This concentration in one city is probably the
most important characteristic of the industry,
influencing in a marked degree the conditions of
employment. Measured by value of products,
74.3 per cent of the flower and feather trade in
the United States in 1905 was located in Man-
hattan and the Bronx.f Only two other indus-
tries in the whole country showed a more marked
localization in one center; namely, lapidary work
of which 96.5 percent was in New York, and collars
and cuffs of which 89. 5 per cent were made in Troy .J
In 1905, United States census agents counted in
New York City 146 flower and feather factories,
employing 440 men and 2,827 women. § In the
whole United States in the same year they found
but 213 factories in this industry, employing a
total of 604 men and 3,545 women. Thus four-
• The large increase in 1910 as compared with 1905 is probably due
in part to the abnormal demand for willow plumes in the census year
1910. This demand soon lessened and a census taken now would
doubtless show less violent change since 1905.
t Twelfth United States Census, 1905. Manufactures, Part I, p.
cclix.
t Ibid, Part I, p. cclix.
§ Ibid, Part II, p. 770.
THE ARTIFICIAL FLOWER TRADE
fifths of the entire number of women employed
in the trade throughout the country were working
in New York. Of the remainder, 336 were in
Philadelphia, 130 in Chicago, 103 in Baltimore,
and 56 in West Hoboken.* In all, about 700 were
outside New York.f
The story of an expert flower maker, inter-
viewed in this investigation, is an illustration of
the way in which this localization influences
workers to live in Manhattan and to increase the
congestion of population there. After ten years'
experience in the trade in New York, this woman
married and went to Baltimore to live. Her hus-
band was a tailor, earning $15 a week in busy
seasons, but in slack seasons his wages were often
cut in half and occasionally a prolonged strike
meant the loss of all earnings. Twice when her
husband had little or no work, the woman re-
turned to New York with her children and went
to work in a flower factory. She has now con-
cluded that it will be best for the whole family to
stay in Manhattan. " My trade's here," she says.
" I know of only one flower factory in Baltimore
and they don't pay as good wages as here." But
she added regretfully, "I like Baltimore better.
We had six rooms for $12. Here we pay $10 for
one room and there's no conveniences. If I'd
been educated I could have gotten work in Balti-
* Twelfth United States Census, 1905. Manufactures, Part II,
pp. 978, 232, 412, 691.
t Figures from census of 1910 which would be comparable with
those for 1905 are not yet available.
7
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
more, but I only know my trade and it's in New
York."
Concentration in New York is accompanied by
congestion of the flower shops in a small and flower-
less district south of Fourteenth Street and west
of Broadway. In the course of this investigation
only four flower factories were found north of
Fourteenth Street, while 124 were south of it, — 28
on Broadway, 21 east of Broadway, and 75 west
of it. The firms brave enough to move north of
Fourteenth Street are those whose reputation is
sufficiently established to attract buyers away
from their usual haunts. These buyers are the
agents of milliners not from New York alone but
from every state in the union, and their market
for buying all millinery supplies is the wholesale
millinery district in the neighborhood of Broad-
way between Prince and Fourteenth Streets.
Thus the flower manufacturer regards this dis-
trict as the Mecca of his trade.
Flower making is not an independent but a sub-
sidiary industry, chiefly controlled by conditions
in the millinery trade to which it is a contributor.
It is true that a minor branch of artificial flower
manufacture has always been concerned with the
making of flowers and plants as decorations for
houses, theaters, or stores, but the materials used
are coarser, the designs different, and the processes
by no means identical. Workers who make flowers
for decorations do not turn easily to the making of
roses and violets for hat trimmings, and the two
8
THE ARTIFICIAL FLOWER TRADE
types of shops, therefore, represent quite different
occupations. Compare, for example, the cherry
blossoms used on an Easter hat with the full-
blown blossoms on the branches of a cherry tree,
used in some store window as a background for a
display of Japanese kimonos. Only 10 shops
manufacturing such decorations were found in
New York in the course of this inquiry. Much
more important is the production of flowers for
milliners, and it is the work of women in this
branch of the industry which is the subject of
these chapters.
The millinery trade has many ramifications. If
"it takes nine tailors to make a man" it takes
twice nine workers to make a woman's hat. The
shapes are made in straw hat factories, felt hat
factories, and wire frame factories. Trimmings
are produced in artificial flower shops, feather fac-
tories, ribbon factories, and in workrooms for the
manufacture of such miscellaneous supplies as jet
ornaments, bandeaus, shirred chiffon, and pom-
pons. All these materials are bought by the pro-
prietors of those retail millinery shops which we
as private customers know best, and are there
used in the final processes of hat trimming. They
are bought also by wholesale milliners to supply
the salesmen and jobbers who come from north,
south, and west to buy hats by the dozens to be
sold in New England, Louisiana, California, or
Texas.
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
Nor is the millinery industry a simple, well-
organized business with branches clearly defined.
Some firms are both wholesalers and retailers,
selling either to private customers who buy one
hat at a time, or to middlemen or other milliners
who purchase in quantities for sale to their own
customers. Some wholesale milliners not only
trim dozens of one style of headgear, but also
manufacture the straw shapes on which to put the
trimming. Manufacturers of straw hats occa-
sionally add trimming departments. In some
retail establishments all the wire frames are made
in the shop, while other retail milliners buy these
frames from wire frame factories. Some whole-
sale milliners have departments for manufacturing
flowers and feathers, while some manufacturers
of flowers and feathers are also hat trimmers, in
order the better to sell their products by showing
their use on hats. Furthermore, this grouping of
branches of the trade under the same roof varies
from season to season according to the demands
of fashion.
In New York is found all this confusion of mil-
linery. Besides its large retail trade, it has a
wholesale trade unequalled in importance by that
of any other city in the country. The census enu-
merators in 1905 * counted in New York 13,511
women employed in the manufacture of millinery
and lace goods, a group in which wholesale mil-
♦Twelfth United States Census, 1905. Manufactures, Part II,
P- 775-
IO
THE ARTIFICIAL FLOWER TRADE
liners decidedly predominate over the lace goods
makers counted with them. The second city in
importance in this industry was Chicago with
2,298 women workers.
In this kaleidoscopic group of occupations essen-
tial to the making of a woman's hat, artificial
flower making is clearly a dependent in its posi-
tion, with seasons, hours, and even wages largely
determined by conditions in other branches of the
industry. It cannot be more prosperous than the
millinery shops. If unseasonable weather, or a
drop in the stock market, makes the sale of hats
less lively on Fifth Avenue, or in California, the
artificial flower makers in New York suffer. On
the other hand, though the milliners may rejoice
in a profitable season, they do not necessarily share
their profits with flower manufacturers, for fash-
ion may have decreed that hats shall be trimmed
not with flowers but with jet ornaments, or ribbon,
or feathers.
Of all the products of the millinery trade fancy
feathers * are most closely related to artificial
flowers. Fashion has the habit of regarding the
two products as substitutes for one another as
trimming, using more feathers in winter and more
flowers in summer. This has led to a dove-tailing
of the seasons which makes it desirable to carry
* The feather trade has two branches, fancy feathers and ostrich
feathers. The ostrich feather establishments are not connected as
closely as fancy feather factories with any other branch of the indus-
try, and are more independent, — possibly because the use of ostrich
feathers is approved at all times by fashion.
n
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
on both trades under the same roof, with advan-
tage to employers and to workers. Employers
thus prolong the season for their sales, and work-
ers by learning both trades may be employed
more months in the year.
In spite of this close connection, however, it has '
seemed advisable in making this investigation to
study the artificial flower trade as a separate occu-
pation, and to describe the fancy feather trade
only in an incidental way as throwing light on
conditions of employment, especially in regard to
seasons, in flower shops. Obviously the products
and materials used are different, and the processes
of work although similar are by no means identi-
cal. An experienced flower maker must become
a learner again if she would master the feather
trade. Furthermore, some shops manufacture
flowers only. Where both flowers and feathers
are made in the same shop, the tendency is for the
manufacturer to specialize in the sale of one or
the other*. One manufacturer whose sign read
"Flowers and feathers," said that his specialty
was flowers and that he never made feathers ex-
cept in years when flowers were not in demand;
his sign was intended to provide for such emer-
gencies. Workers often make flowers only, and
never learn the processes of feather manufacture.
Home workers in the flower trade are usually a
distinct group having no connection with the
feather trade.
On the other hand, although the two occupa-
12
W
A Feather Factory
1
,•
l i
j $£m^~*-~' tew"-*™
4U*
■■B
•^A^l M
,fli||
^
i
Tp •• %w * '*
1
T
^1^1^^^*** BPffi'--^1
1^ '
^L_
Making Roses, Piece Work
THE ARTIFICIAL FLOWER TRADE
tions are distinct in so many respects, their close
intertwining creates difficulties in considering
them separately. It is hard to secure clear-cut
information in interviews with employers or
workers engaged in both trades. The fact that
the official reports of factory inspectors and cen-
sus enumerators include data on feather and
flower making combined has already been noted.
This very lack of distinct information, however,
may be considered an added reason for separate
study.
Nothing in the nature of the work would pre-
vent one flower maker from carrying on a business
independently. She could design and execute, using
real flowers as models, and sell direct to private
customers. Such a plan might make the work an
art to be practiced in a professional spirit, with
pride in the creation of a beautiful object. In
fact, just such a spirit animates some of the
women who make the exquisite Parisian flowers.
Usually the history of a trade shows that the
coming of machines has substituted the factory
system for this artist method, as for example, in
the binding of books. In flower making, it is not
machinery but the organization of the market
which has turned an art into a trade. Because a
manufacturer sells a hundred gross of flowers to a
wholesale milliner instead of two or three beauti-
ful roses to a private customer, he organizes a shop
and employs many workers who are driven by the
necessity to swell the volume of production rather
*3
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
than by the desire to create a perfect and beauti-
ful object.
The raw materials used in the making of flowers
are chiefly muslin, silk, and velvet.* These are
bought from other manufacturers and come in
large bolts apparently ready for the counter of a
department store. Usually white is used, and the
color applied later. In preparation for the mak-
ing of leaves or flowers, the material is cut off in a
strip usually a yard and a half long and stretched
on a wooden frame. Starch is then applied with
a brush to give the required stiffness to the goods.
If leaves are to be made, the green color is brushed
on while the muslin is on the frame; if flowers,
the dyeing is done later, after the muslin or silk or
velvet has been taken from the frame and cut into
petals in the cutting department. The tools for
the cutting are a steel die or stamp, a lead block,
and a wooden mallet. f As soon as the petals are
cut they are ready to be dyed.
In the selection of the color fashion is as much
in control as in any other department of the milli-
nery industry; for if the shade of its petal be not
fashionable, the flower will not sell. Color charts
are secured from Paris each season, and the dyer
has a chart constantly before him as a guide. It is
* Contributory industries supply also powders for dyes, wire of
various kinds, tools, muslin, and rubber tubes for stems, tiny peps
which form the center of the flowers, tied buds for roses, and some-
times leaves.
t A cutting machine is on the market but seems to be seldom used.
14
THE ARTIFICIAL FLOWER TRADE
the task of the dyer not only to dissolve the pow-
dered aniline but to mix it so as to produce exactly
the colors displayed on the Parisian chart or those
ordered by the designer in the shop. The dye
must then be applied in exactly the right way to
each petal. Sometimes petals are stenciled, as for
example in the making of an orchid. The finished
petals are finally laid out to dry between sheets in
a wire frame. For the best grade of flowers they
are dried naturally; in some shops they are dried
in a room artificially heated. These processes of
starching, cutting, and dyeing are done usually by
men,* and it is not until the dyeing of the petals
is completed that the girls' work begins.
Their work has three main divisions : preparing,
making, and branching. The petals when cut are
flat, and except in color and outline they bear
small resemblance to any part of a flower. To
"prepare" them means to shape them by curling
their edges, pinching them between the fingers, or
"goffering" them. Goffering is the making of
the cup-like shape such as that of a rose petal, and
it is done with a tool consisting of a ball at the end
of a handle. This ball is heated on a gas stove and
applied to each petal as it rests on the cup-like
palm of the handjVCrimping machines are used
in some factories, Jfrut only for cheap flowers.
Mi
* A woman does th/cwcing in one factory, but she is said to be the
only woman in the/city/ who has learned this process. Some em-
ployers say that the dyers jealously guard their methods as trade
secrets, and woula certainly be unwilling to teach women to be their
competitors.
15
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
"Making" includes all the processes of arrang-
ing the separate petals to form the flower, and at-
taching the stem. In the making of a rose, for
example, the petals used are of different sizes.
Each must be pasted in its appointed place about
a center attached to a wire which when bound in
green forms the stem. In some models the petals
are not pasted on in this way but are " slipped-up " ;
that is, the stem is inserted through a hole in each
petal which is then "slipped-up" into its place and
held with paste. In making cheap flowers this
single process takes the place of preparing as well
as of making. After the petals are cut, piles of a
dozen or more are put in the "punching and gof-
fering machine" which at one stroke punches a
hole through the center and rounds the petals into
a cup shape. The makers simply pull the petals
apart, slip the stem through the hole, slip the petal
up the stem, and pinch it into place about the
" peps " or bud which forms the center. This proc-
ess is flower making reduced to its simplest terms,
requiring neither taste nor skill but demanding
merely an easily acquired deftness of touch which
makes speed possible.
Leaves are sometimes made in separate factories.
After they have been cut with hammer and die
from the green-dyed muslin, which has been
starched and colored while stretched on a frame,
a stem is pasted to each leaf, — an unskilled and
monotonous process done sometimes by girls,
sometimes by boys. When the stem is attached
16
THE ARTIFICIAL FLOWER TRADE
the leaf is veined. This is done on a pressing ma-
chine moved by a hand wheel not unlike an ordi-
nary letter press. It also is unskilled work but
requires speed and greater strength than is needed
for any other process done by girls in this trade.
When flowers and leaves are completed they are
brought together and deftly arranged to appear
pleasing to the customer. This is called branch-
ing and is considered the most skilled work in the
trade. Its success depends entirely upon taste,
deftness of touch, and readiness in understanding
the thought of the designer who planned the model. *
All the work involved in this construction of a
bunch of artificial flowers may be wasted if they
are not of the form, color, and size to be popular
in the market. The success of a firm depends,
therefore, upon the work of designing and of
making samples to be copied in the workroom. It
is said that few designers worthy of the name are to
be found in New York. In the better grade of
factory, the models are flowers that have been de-
signed and made in Paris. In the cheaper grade,
the product of the higher grade factory is copied. f
Sometimes the manager is responsible for the
designs. He buys an imported sample, or brings a
real flower to the factory, as suggestion for a model
* The final work is to arrange the flowers in boxes not only for
shipping, but for display in the showrooms of wholesale milliners.
New York readers will recall these displays in the windows of shops
in lower Broadway. In large factories packers have no opportunity
to learn to make flowers.
t Manufacturers complain that rival firms send girls into their
workrooms to stay two or three days and steal the styles.
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
which he explains fully to the sample makers. He
must understand the prevailing millinery styles so
well as to be able to prophesy the probable success
of the design. On the basis of this prophecy, he
must purchase the right materials, tell the dyer
what shade is needed, order the right number of
petals to be cut, and explain to the girls exactly
how to prepare, make, and branch the flower. The
models prepared by the sample makers stand be-
fore their eyes for copying. After the sample flow-
ers are finished success depends on the salesmen
who go out to solicit orders, or on the fancy of
buyers who frequent the showroom.
In this establishment the work is almost all done
to fill definite orders. Each model has its number
and can readily be duplicated after the first sam-
ples have been shown to customers. The risk of
making stock in advance of orders is said to be
very great in this trade. "We cannot tell what
the leading color will be," said this manager. "A
milliner may try to push a certain color but if
women see something they like better they won't
buy what the milliner offers them." This view
was emphasized by a forewoman who was also a
designer. "One week you load up with blue
flowers," said she, "and the next you can't get rid
of them at any price." Even in filling orders the
risk is not small. Buyers from the west may have
been unwise in their judgment of what would please
their customers, and after leaving New York they
may telegraph cancelation. To sue a buyer for
18
THE ARTIFICIAL FLOWER TRADE
canceling his order would mean the loss of other
customers, who would fear similar treatment.
For example, in the spring of 1910 some flower
manufacturer designed a species of wheat which
was made up in a great variety of colors, regard-
less of the shade preferred by nature. The design
became very popular. One New York factory
opened a branch in Brooklyn solely for its manu-
facture, to secure workers who were not available
in large enough numbers that season in the neigh-
borhood of the New York establishment. Another,
situated on the lower west side, rented a store in an
upper east side street and sought out home workers
in a district not hitherto exploited by the flower
trade. Suddenly the demand for wheat collapsed,
as though this artificial product were trying to
simulate the power of the real model to create a
panic on the Stock Exchange. From all over the
country came telegrams canceling orders, and the
firms in chagrin offered wheat to purchasers at
prices that did not cover the wages paid the makers.
Fashion is a sensitive creature; she loves a model
which is popular enough to be called stylish, but
not so prevalent as to be worn by "everybody"
and thus to be condemned as "common." Be-
tween what is fashionable and what is common is
a very short step, and unless buyers and jobbers
take account of this fact they may work havoc for
the flower maker. Capricious fancy is ready to
adopt the most whimsical suggestions drawn from
a new play, or from nowhere in particular. On
19
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
such uncertain conditions depends in large meas-
ure the welfare of workers in the trade. "Our
flower season usually lasts until May," said one
employer. "But this year Chantecler made it
stop short the first week in April. "
Between the fine "made" rose copied from the
model of an expert and the "slipped-up" butter-
cup there are many grades of flowers. It is in the
assignment of the tasks of preparing, making, and
branching to one worker, or their subdivision
among groups, that firms differ in their methods.
These differences in organization in workrooms
depend upon the grades of flower made in them.
Cheap flowers whose petals are "slipped-up" de-
mand no carefully organized and well-trained
group of preparers and makers as do those which
are made by pasting each petal in its proper
place. The finer the flower the more important it
is that it be prepared and made by one hand.
Subdivision of processes does not produce an
artistic effect.
In the higher grade establishments the subdi-
vision which exists is not according to process
but according to kind of flower, — violet, orchid,
or rose,- -each worker preparing and making the
whole. Branching is almost always a distinct de-
partment, although it is by no means unusual for
an experienced worker in the trade to know how
to branch as well as how to prepare and to make.
So distinct are the processes, however, that there
are importing firms in New York with branching
20
THE ARTIFICIAL FLOWER TRADE
departments only, the making having been com-
pleted in Europe. Even in the manufacture of
cheap flowers branching requires skill.
The difference in product probably accounts
for the differences of opinion of employers as to
whether it is more profitable to have workers spe-
cialize in one process only or to make the whole
flower. Nothing in the nature of the task pre-
vents individual work and all the artistic results
implied in thus giving free scope to the worker.
It is the market a firm supplies that determines
its method. If it cater to the demand for a cheap
product its workers will specialize, one girl pre-
paring petals, another pasting, because this makes
greater speed possible. If it meet a demand for
good work its workers will probably make the
whole flower. Large establishments may combine
both methods, having some flowers made by all-
round workers, and others divided among groups
of girls who press, crimp, goff, paste, or slip-up.
One large factory has found it desirable to have
the work done by groups of three, — two preparing
the petals under the direction of the third who is
the maker, thus aiming at the advantages both of
specialization and completeness. The preparers see
the whole process of making from the beginning,
while the maker produces more rapidly than if she
worked alone.
Thus the factory system, without the use of ma-
chines, has taken possession of this trade, not be-
cause the process requires it, but because sales
21
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
are made at wholesale and volume of production
is the aim. The final step in organization to meet
the demand for the cheap and plentiful is the de-
velopment of the home-work system, which makes
the artificial flower trade a sweated industry in New
York. In the manufacture of cheap flowers the
only skilled processes are cutting and dyeing and the
final branching. The whole process between, con-
sisting as it does only of slipping up the petals, can
be removed from the factory to tenement homes,
thus utilizing the labor of the unskilled. This
practice swells the volume of production while
relieving the employer of paying for rent and heat
for these workers.
Artificial flowers are not a necessity, and the de-
mand for them depends on their attractiveness to
the milliners' customers. The attractiveness of
the flower depends in turn upon the skill of the
workers. From this point of view the adoption
of factory methods, followed by the development
of sweated forms of home work, does not promise
well for New York's power to produce as beauti-
ful a flower as the Parisian. A study of the con-
ditions of women's work in artificial flower shops
is a study not only of the welfare of the workers
but of the very life and future prosperity of the
industry.
22
CHAPTER II
WORKERS IN THE SHOPS
EMPLOYERS who confess that the artificial
flowers made in the United States are not
equal in workmanship to the Parisian prod-
uct, usually claim that this inferiority is due to the
lack of the right type of workers. Many of these
are young girls, who drift into a flower shop from
a candy factory, and out of it again to become
cash girls in department stores. Employers com-
plain also that the workrooms are filled with
foreigners. "Formerly Americans and Germans
worked at the trade," said one employer, "and
then the Italians and Jews came in and killed it.
It has changed the class of work. We cannot com-
pete with them in cheapness of product. The only
way out is for us to make higher class goods, not
cheaper, and for this we need a better class of work-
ers and we cannot seem to attract them/'
A study of the workers interviewed in this in-
vestigation, supported by census data, indicates
a large proportion of young girls in the trade. Of
the group of girls interviewed 25, or about 14 per
cent, were under sixteen; 125, or 72 per cent, were
between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five; while
only 24, or about 1 4 per cent, were twenty-five years
23
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
of age or older. Figures given in the United States
Census of 1900 are in substantial agreement, show-
ing that of 1 ,670 flower makers* enumerated in the
house-to-house canvass in New York City, 233, or
14 per cent, were under sixteen; 1,053, or 63 per
cent, between sixteen and twenty-five; and 384, or
2 3 per cent, twenty-five or over. Thus the propor-
tion under sixteen agrees with our investigation,
although the census shows a larger percentage over
twenty-five. Official figures on this point are not
yet available for iajo.f Between our investiga-
tion and the taking of the census of 1900 here
quoted is a lapse of ten years, so that rigid com-
parison is not feasible. It is possible that in that
decade a larger proportion of young girls have
entered the trade. Or it may be that we inter-
viewed younger women, although judged by wages,
to be discussed later,! they were better paid than
the group enumerated in the census. Both sets
of figures agree, however, in showing that a large
majority are under twenty-five. This means that
a considerable proportion of the present workers
,were not in the trade ten years ago, that the occu-
pation does not hold its workers for many years,
and that in a single decade great changes occur in
the personnel of workroom forces. That so large
a proportion of younger workers is not found in
all women's trades is shown by Table 2 and the
♦Twelfth United States Census, 1900. Occupations, p. 640.
t For total number of wage-earners counted in the industry in
1910, see Chapter I, p. 4.
t See Chapter IV, p. 66.
24
Making Hearts for Roses
Goffering Rose Petals
WORKERS IN THE SHOPS
chart which follows, giving the comparative ages
in other important occupations in New York.
TABLE 2. — AGES OF WOMEN EMPLOYED IN ALL
MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES, IN ARTIFICIAL
FLOWER MAKING, AND IN OTHER SPECI-
FIED INDUSTRIES. NEW YORK CITY,
1 9OO a
WOMEN EMPLOYED,
BY AGES
Industry
10 years
and un-
16 years
and un-
25 years
and
over
All
women
der 16
der 25
years
years
All manufacturing industries
Number ....
12,647
69,967
49,864
132,478
Per cent .
9
53
38
too
Artificial flower making
•
Number .
233
1,053
384
1,670
Per cent .
14
63
23
100
Dressmaking
Number .
1,836
15,409
20,263
37.5o8
Per cent .
5
41
54
100
Millinery
Number .
761
4.340
2,546
7.647
Per cent .
10
57
33
100
Paper box making
Number .
544
1,819
730
3.093
Per cent .
'7
59
24
too
a Twelfth United States Census,
tions, p. 640.
1900. Special Reports, Occupa-
Dressmaking was chosen for comparison be-
cause it employs more women than any other trade
in New York, millinery because it is the trade on
which artificial flower shops depend, and paper
box making because a number of factories are lo-
cated in the same district as are the artificial flower
25
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
establishments. The figures are also given for all
manufacturing pursuits grouped together. Com-
Artificial n
flower Dr5?s-
making maklnS
Milli-
nery
100
25 years and over
Yyyffiy\ '6 years and under 25 years
't Vi ''J Under »6 years
Chart I. — Age Distribution of Women Employed in Artificial
Flower Making, in Other Specified Manufacturing In-
dustries, and in all Manufacturing Industries, New York
City, 1900
pared with this latter comprehensive group of all
trades, a larger proportion of children under six-
teen is found in the artificial flower shops, — 14 per
26
WORKERS IN THE SHOPS
cent as compared with 9 per cent. The group
between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five is also
larger in the flower trade, — 63 per cent as com-
pared with 53 per cent. Of all women in manu-
facturing nearly 50,000, or 38 per cent of the total
employed, have passed their twenty-fifth birthday,
compared with 23 per cent who continue in flower
shops until they reach that age. Dressmaking
offers a contrast even more striking, with only 5
per cent of its women employes under sixteen,
and 54 per cent twenty-five or over. In milli-
nery 10 per cent are under sixteen, 57 per cent
between sixteen and twenty-five, and 33 per cent
twenty-five or over. The paper box trade em-
ploys about the same proportion under the age
of twenty-five as does the flower trade, but the
percentage under sixteen is larger.
It is evident that flower making ranks with in-
dustries employing a large proportion of young
girls. "Nearly all the girls round here work on
flowers, especially the little girls/' said one young
flower maker. Several employers complained of
this condition, explaining that it was due to the
fact that as girls grow older they leave the trade
for other occupations. Workers, asked for the
reason, said that it was because of low wages,
short seasons, and "no chance to advance." What-
ever the explanation may be, a preponderance of
young workers in an industry is a fact of great im-
portance in its relation to wages, seasons, and
hours of labor, and in its bearing on the develop-
27
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
ment of skill. The absence of older workers is
usually a sign that the reward of experience is too
small, and that the occupation is not so organized
as to encourage a high grade of efficiency.
The second point made by employers, that the
more recently arrived foreigners were taking the
place of workers formerly employed in the trade,
was corroborated by our data. In a trade in which
the personnel of the force changes so frequently
as it does in flower shops, changes in nationalities
represented are to be expected. On this point
the data gathered by the census of 1900 and those
gathered by our investigators in 19 10 present
marked differences, especially in regard to the
birthplaces of the parents of flower makers. Of
174 workers interviewed by us, 88, or about half,
were born in the United States. These figures
agree closely with the census figures of 1900, in
which 54 per cent of the flower and feather makers
were recorded as "native born white/' Birth-
places of the foreign born workers are not speci-
fied in the census. Our investigation shows that
49, over a fourth, were born in Italy; 20, or a ninth,
in Russia; 12, or a fifteenth, in Austria, Hungary,
or Bohemia.* Gauged by parentage, however, a
much larger proportion represent foreign coun-
tries. This fact, and the differences between cen-
sus figures in 1900 and our data of 1910-11, ap-
pear in Table 3.
* Three were born respectively in England, Germany, Roumania.
Of two the birthplace was not stated.
28
WORKERS IN THE SHOPS
TABLE 3. — NATIVITY OF PARENTS OF WOMEN
EMPLOYED IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWER
MAKING, NEW YORK CITY
DATA OF PRESENT
INVESTIGATION
CENSUS FIGURES
Women with fathers
Women with parents
Country of bi
rth born as specified *
born as specified b
Number
Per cent
Number
Per cent
United States
3
2
117
7
Italy
124
72
301
18
Russia, Poland
24
14
379
23
Austria, Hungary
, Bo-
hernia
18
10
109
6
Germany
2
1
433
26
Ireland .
195
12
Other countries
2
1
137
8
Total .
173
100
1,671
100
»Of the 174 women interviewed, one did not supply information
as to nativity of father.
b Both parents born as specified, or one as specified and the other
born in the United States. Mixed foreign parentage is included under
"Other countries." United States Census, 1900. Occupations, p. 640.
The characteristic of the census figures is the
comparatively even representation of persons from
Italy, Russia, and Germany, and a somewhat
smaller number from Ireland, while our data show
a much larger proportion of Italians, 72 per cent,
and no Irish. Of course, the number included in
our interviews is small compared with the census
totals, but the variety of sources of our names, —
settlements, girls' clubs, public evening schools
throughout Manhattan, and fellow-workers in the
trade, — and the facts gathered through the thor-
29
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
ough canvass of employers indicate that the groups
are typical. Furthermore, the census of 1 9 1 o shows
that the Italian population of New York more
than doubled between 1900 and 19 10, increasing in
the ten years from 145,429 to 340,524.* This fact
further supports the explanation of the difference
between our figures and those of 1900; namely, that
conditions changed greatly in the trade in that
decade. It lends support to the assertion of em-
ployers and workers that the Italians are "driving
out" other nationalities from the flower shops.
A number of employers complained that this
change in the nationality of workers cheapens
the work in the shops, and results in the spread of
the home-work system. One man who manufac-
tured flowers for decoration, but who was well
informed about conditions in the millinery branch
of the industry, said, "There used to be a good
many American girls employed in the trade. Then
there was no home work. The Italians began the
home work fifteen or twenty years ago. They
have cheapened the whole trade. They are will-
ing to work at home for anything because they
have their children to help. A manufacturer who
has his work done in the shop cannot compete
with employers who give it out/'
This reputation of Italian women for under-
bidding is not confined to the flower trade.f In
♦United States Bureau of the Census, Special Notice for Press
Associations, correspondents, etc. 1912. Nationality of the foreign
born white population of New York.
t For further discussion of the subject, see pp. 67-70.
30
WORKERS IN THE SHOPS
other industries also they are charged, as are Ital-
ian men, with working for wages below the pre-
vailing standard. Because of this charge, data
about the distribution of Italian women in other
occupations throw light on the artificial flower
trade.
TABLE 4. — WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS BY NATIVITY
OF PARENTS AND GENERAL OCCUPATIONS.
NEW YORK CITY, I900a
WOMEN WITH PARENTS BORN IN b
All
coun-
tries
United
States
Ireland
Ger-
many
Russia
and
Poland
Italy
Number considered0
366,997
7I.I49
112,421
72,554
24,238
12,127
Per cent occupied in
Professional service
Domestic and per-
sonal service
Trade and trans-
portation
Manufacturing and
mechanical pur-
suits .
6.1
40.0
17.8
36.1
13-3
37-7
23.4
25.6
3-9
52.0
16.3
27.8
4.2
373
18.7
39.8
1-5
15.2
14.3
69.0
1 .2
13.2
8.1
77-5
Total
100. 0
100. 0
100. 0
100. 0
100. 0
100. 0
a Twelfth United States Census, 1900. Special Reports, Occupa-
tions, p. 638.
b Women having one parent born in the United States and one born
abroad are classified as of foreign parentage according to the nativity
of the foreign born parent.
"The totals given do not include women engaged in agricultural
pursuits of whom 440 were reported in New York City.
While the figures given in Table 4 are those
of 1900, and cannot therefore be accepted un-
31
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
hesitatingly as indicative of present conditions,
observation of all the women wage-earners in the
Italian families visited in the course of this study
confirms the main conclusions of the census report
regarding the types of employment selected by
the largest groups of Italian women. A compari-
son of their choice of occupation with that of the
four nationalities most largely represented among
wage-earning women in New York brings to light
some significant facts about the position of Italian
girls in industry. The four predominant groups
of women wage-earners in New York in order of
numerical importance are, first, those of Irish par-
entage; second, German; third, native born; and
fourth, Russian.* Italians are seventh in the list.
,Of the women wage-earners of Italian parentage,
a very large majority are in manufacturing in-
dustries, while only a small group are employed in
domestic and personal service, and a still smaller
proportion earn their living in the group of oc-
cupations known as trade and transportation,
including saleswork, stenography, typewriting,
bookkeeping, and similar office work. This con-
centration in one group of wage-earning pursuits is
more marked for Italian girls than for those of any
other nationality.
Of all wage-earning girls of Italian parentage 78
per cent are in factories, as compared with 69 per
cent of the Russians, 40 per cent of the Germans,
♦Twelfth United States Census, 1900. Special Reports, Occupa-
tions, p. 639.
32
WORKERS IN THE SHOPS
28 per cent of the Irish, and 26 per cent of the na-
tive born. Equally marked is the concentration of
Italian girls in a few trades in the group of manu-
facturing pursuits. Thus 52 per cent of I talian girls
in all occupations are employed as tailors, dress-
makers, or seamstresses, compared with 14 per
cent of the Irish, 21 per cent of the German, and
19 per cent of all nationalities. In the 16 trades
employing 1,000 or more women in New York,
Italians lead in numbers employed in two, — in
tailoring and in candy making. The other groups
in which they are found in large numbers are dress-
making, sewing, tobacco and cigar manufacture,
and artificial flower making.*
These data indicate that the Italian girl's choice
of work is limited. Whatever the cause, whether
jt be ignorance of the labor market, prejudice
of the Italian girls themselves against other occupa-
tions or of employers against them as workers, this
tendency to congregate in the trades commonly
considered sweated is a fact of great importance to
* Card records of 97 club members in a social settlement, Richmond
Hill House, located in the center of an Italian district, showed, June,
191 1, a fairly even distribution of girls employed in artificial flower
and feather making (21), dressmaking and hand sewing (21), em-
broidery (15), candy making (11), and machine sewing (8). The
other occupations represented were millinery; machine sewing on
vests, corset covers, and bathrobes; paper box making; ribbon manu-
facture; umbrella making; and sample mounting. A mutual benefit
association, organized in connection with the same settlement, for
the purpose of securing medical assistance at small cost for its mem-
bers and for the discussion of industrial problems, had 17 members
employed in the artificial flower and feather trade, 34 in hand sewing
trades, eight in machine sewing, and scattered members at work in
candy factories, box factories, bookbinding, saleswork, and a few
minor occupations.
33
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
the welfare not only of I talians but of other wage-
earning women in New York.
The significance of these tentative statements
in relation to the flower trade is obvious. As home
workers and as shop workers, Italian girls are an
important factor in determining the conditions of
flower manufacture. If their choice of other oc-
cupations be limited, we are likely to see an in-
creasing competition on their part in the flower
shops, with an extension of the home-work system
and its evil influences, a further curtailing of the
seasons in consequence of this extension, and a
probable reduction in wages such as usually follows
keen competition for employment. Moreover, the
characteristic attitude of Italian girls toward their
work is an important factor to be considered in its
effect on conditions in industries in which their
numbers are increasing as they are in flower shops.
Many exceptions must be made to any charac-
terization of national traits. Nevertheless, the
difference is marked between the attitude of the
Italian flower maker toward her work and that of
her fellow worker, a Jewish girl from Russia or
Austria or Germany. Briefly stated, it may be
said that when the Italian girl exhibits an interest
in her trade it is an interest in craftsmanship or in
her own wages rather than in general trade condi-
tions. The Jewish girl, on the contrary, has a dis-
tinct sense of her social responsibility and often
displays an eager zest for discussion of labor prob-
lems. These traits naturally make a marked im-
34
A Corner of a Large Broadway Factory
Branching Roses
WORKERS IN THE SHOPS
pression on an investigator. The Italian girl will
receive her visitor with courteous hospitality and
will proudly show her some artificial flowers which
she has made, often insisting on presenting one or
two as a gift. She will answer all questions gra-
ciously but briefly, considering work in the flower
trade as only one of many interesting topics of con-
versation. It is vital to her not as a general indus-
trial problem but as a means of supplying money
for the needs of her family, to whose welfare she is
traditionally inclined to subordinate her individual
desires. The Jewish girl, on the other hand, will
probably plunge at once into a discussion of her
trade, its advantages and disadvantages, wages,
hours of work, and instances of shabby treatment
in the shops, or of unsanitary conditions in the
workrooms. Her attitude is likely to be that of an
agitator. Nevertheless, she has the foundation of
that admirable trait, "public spirit," and a sense
of relationships to a community larger than the
family or the personal group of which she happens
to be a member. It follows that the Italian girl
is more willing than the Jewish girl to accept con-
ditions as she finds them. The owner of a large
flower factory says that he prefers to employ Ital-
ians because they "are more tractable."
These differences in point of view prevent a
sense of fellowship among them: their common
interests as workers in the same occupation have
never been realized or expressed in any representa-
tive group organization in the artificial flower
35
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
trade. The attempt on the part of the Jewish
girls to organize a trade union has failed so
signally that not until several months after the in-
vestigation began did we find any girls who had
ever heard of such an effort. Finally two were
found who had been members. They were inter-
viewed at different times and the visitor thus
records their reports of the organization :
I. The Flower Makers' Union was organized about 1907,
but broke up in six months or so. There were about 200
members including girls and men cutters, colorers, etc. They
met every Friday evening in a hall on 2nd Street near Avenue
A. The dues were 5 cents a week. The girl interviewed said
it was hard to persuade girls to join. They were not inter-
ested. One girl said, "I'm going to get married soon," and
another, "I got a fellow. Vy should I join?" When asked
the aims of the union, the girl informant said, "We started
to kick about wages. But when I asked my boss for a
raise, he said, 'For vy should I gif you a raise? Didn't I
teach you the trade?'" However, even this girl is not inter-
ested in starting the union again, as she has a fairly good posi-
tion with steady work all year, and does not now feel a per-
sonal need for its support.
II. The second girl said that the union was started chiefly
by girls in the Broadway flower factory in which she happened
to be employed. She was the secretary. Most of the mem-
bers were Jewish girls, who had just come from Europe and
could not speak English, and the discussions were carried on
and the minutes kept in Yiddish. They met in a hall on
2nd Street. They had several mass meetings, but these were
very poorly attended, with one exception, when several fore-
women came, and there were English and Italian speakers.
36
WORKERS IN THE SHOPS
In 1909 or 1910 an attempt was made to unite the milliners,
wire makers, and flower makers into one union so that they
could control the trade, but it was not successful. Since then
the Flower Makers' Union has been replaced by the Educa-
tional League of Flower Makers, which meets every Saturday
evening. Yiddish only is spoken at its meetings. It was
thought that more girls would join, if it were not called a
union, but this girl left, saying that she would not return
unless they frankly called themselves a union.
The old union had saved up $100 in its treasury, which in
19 10 they turned over to help the shirtwaist strikers. After
the success of that strike in winning members for the shirt-
waist union, some of the flower makers thought of organ-
izing their union again. But many girls, "especially the
Americans," are not interested in joining, "because they don't
expect to stay in the trade. They think only of themselves,"
said this girl. "Perhaps some day they will have daughters
working at this same trade, and they could help them if they
would form a union." The Italian girls, she says, have no
interest in unions. This Russian Jewish girl's comment was,
"If they were more civilized, they wouldn't take such low
pay. But they go without hats and gloves and umbrellas."
The attitude of these young girls of different
races and different points of view toward their
trade is too often a casual one. u I don't like the
trade," said one girl. " I happened to learn it be-
cause one day I saw a sign on a door and I went
upstairs to the shop. I got into it and I don 't seem
to be able to get out of it." Two sisters expressed
the same lack of interest, without having the initi-
ative to enable them to take the visitor's sugges-
tion to find another occupation. "We might only
37
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
get into more trouble/' said they. Julia, an Ital-
ian, liked it better, but her reason for choosing it
had been the casual one that "everybody else I
knew worked in it. It is the Italians' trade;
and then I thought that when I get married I can
still keep it up at home." In contrast to this plan
for the future was that of Gertie, a quiet-voiced,
gentle Russian girl, whose younger sister said of
her, "She'd like to leave the trade now, but she
thinks that perhaps soon somebody will marry her
and she won't have to work any more."
It is noteworthy that workers of real ability, not
so much from lack of interest as from lack of con-
fidence, sometimes shun promotion to positions of
greater responsibility. One worker refused an
offer to be forewoman in a shop where a number of
German girls who could speak no English were
employed. " I was afraid that I wouldn't be able
to get along," was her explanation. Another,
Theresa, an Italian girl, had reached the position
of forewoman with full responsibility for the shop
employes and the home workers. But when she
found that she could get the same wages in another
shop without being in charge, she preferred the less
responsible position.
On the other hand, many workers are ambitious
to advance to higher ranks and take great pride in
their work. "Do I like the trade?" said one. " I
don't like it, — I love it." Others emphasized its
social opportunities. "A nice class of girls go into
it, — nice girls to pal with." This idea was voiced
38
WORKERS IN THE SHOPS
again by a woman who had worked twenty-seven
years in flower shops. "There is always some
news to talk about among the girls in the shop,"
she said; and added, "It is interesting work and
does not tire one."
These workers who "love the trade" prove its
possibilities for attractiveness, but too many others
have the drifters' attitude of indifference or aver-
sion. They are in it because they happened to see
a sign on a factory door when they were out look-
ing for work. When the season in the trade is over
they must find other employment, and they may
never return to flower making. If under these
conditions they lack interest and pride in their
work it is not the workers but the industry which
must be held primarily responsible. Conditions in
the trade are opposed to the development of that
spirit of craftsmanship which springs from love of
the work and joy in doing it, and is fostered by
rewards ahead for experience and skill,, the influ-
ence of older workers in the workroom, steady em-
ployment, and adequate payment for work well
done. It is upon such conditions that the ulti-
mate success of the artificial flower industry will
depend. Many employers complain of inefficiency
in their workrooms. Few have tried to grapple
with the situation by a fundamental change in the
conditions which produce inefficiency and afford
no encouragement to craftsmanship.
39
CHAPTER III
THE SEASONS AND UNEMPLOYMENT
THE number of workers employed in the
artificial flower trade is not fixed but varies
each month of the year. This changing
ratio between the demand and the supply of labor
influences profoundly all other important condi-
tions in the trade, — disorganizes workrooms,
lengthens the hours of work in one season and re-
duces earnings in another, attracts casual workers,
interferes with the training of learners, and causes
girls to drift from trade to trade. Yet important
as it is to have accurate information as a first step
in solving in any trade this immense problem of
irregular employment, facts about it are not easily
secured. The uncertainty which menaces the
workers, creates difficulties for the investigator.
That flower makers face the problem of the
seasons is shown first of all by the fluctuations in
the numbers employed during the course of a year.
Of 114 firms investigated, 10 1 reported the com-
parative numbers employed in their workrooms
in busy and dull months. The maximum force of
women in these shops was 4,470. In slack season
only 873 of these 4,470 workers were still to be
found in the workrooms, and of that number 385
40
THE SEASONS AND UNEMPLOYMENT
were not flower makers only but worked on feath-
ers also, according to the orders received. It was
found that 46 firms employed no flower makers in
their slack seasons, 1 5 employed less than five, and
13 employed between five and 10. The length of
the seasons as reported by 113 of the 114 em-
ployers is shown in Table 5.
TABLE 5. — LENGTH OF BUSY SEASON OF YEAR IN
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER SHOPS a
Length of busy season
Shops in which length of busy
season was as specified
3 months
4 months
5 months
6 months
7 months
8 months
9 months
10 months
" Busy all the year" ....
Seasons too irregular to be classified .
3
10
10
'3
18
30
17
4
5
3
Total
113
a Of the 1 14 firms investigated, one did not supply information.
Only five shops were reported as "busy all
year/' 17 reported a nine-month season, and four
said that they were busy ten months. Thus only
26, or almost one-fourth (23 per cent) of the num-
ber investigated, had a season longer than eight
months, while among the remainder the chief
characteristic was variety in the length of the busy
period ranging from three months to eight. Even
41
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
during those months, the maximum force may be
employed for a short time only, for within that pe-
riod business has its ups and downs. " It is a trade
that depends on the will and fashion of women.
You never can tell what kind of a season you are
likely to have/' said one employer. "It's busy,
busy, busy," said a flower maker, "and then the
work stops like that/' slapping her hand on the
table. Moreover, between the busy months and
the slack months there is a fringe of uncertain
days, so that it is desirable to know also the length
of the slack season. This cannot safely be de-
termined merely by subtracting the number of
prosperous months from twelve. A statement of
the slack months in the 1 1 3 flower shops where em-
ployers reported the facts is given in Table 6.
TABLE 6. — LENGTH OF SLACK SEASON OF YEAR IN
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER SHOPS a
Length of slack season
Shops in which length of slack
season was as specified
1 month
2 months
3 months
4 months
5 months
6 months
7 months
8 months
No slack time
Seasons too irregular to be classified .
3
'3
32
31
14
8
3
1
5
3
Total
"3
a Of 1 14 firms investigated, one did not supply information.
42
THE SEASONS AND UNEMPLOYMENT
It will thus be seen that in more than half the
shops the workers must expect a dull period of
three or four months every year. During that
time, as is shown by the figures indicating fluctua-
tions in numbers employed, about one girl in every
group of five will have work. The remaining four
must look for other employment or else be idle.
This uncertainty seems to be especially marked in
the fall season. Sometimes no flowers are worn
on fashionable winter hats, and then the season
from September to December disappears from the
flower maker's calendar. " If they wear flowers in
the fall we are busy all the time," said one em-
ployer; "if not, then only from January to June."
This frequent change in styles makes stock work
impossible, consequently flowers are made only fori
immediate sale or after orders have been given for
them. Many employers consider this the chief
reason for the short seasons. "It's like specula-
tion," said the owner of a small shop; "if you only
could find out what the style is going to be, you'd
get rich, but you cannot make stock on anything
but black flowers." Since the trade is largely a
branch of the millinery industry, the bulk of the
orders depends upon the preparation of spring hats.
Beginning, therefore, about eight months before
Easter, and straggling along in scattered groups
from July to December, the shops gradually "take
on hands" necessary to fill the equally straggling
orders.
Partjime is another phase of the problem. Firms
43
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
may report that they keep their employes "all
year round," and yet the workers may suffer the
disadvantages of irregularity by a reduction in pay
in dull weeks. For instance, a rose maker who
earned $9.00 a week in the busy season was em-
ployed through the dull summer months, but she
worked only three days a week with half pay, ex-
cept for an occasional week when more orders were
received. Even then she was paid $2.00 less than
in the winter for a full week's work, a premium to
the firm for not " laying her off." Such cuts in pay
may apply to the rates paid to girls whose earnings
are determined by the number of flowers made, as
well as to those whose wages are fixed by the week.
One employer pointed to a "standard" rose which
can be made in slack season with the certainty that
it will be marketable in busy months. He cuts
the rate for making it from 35 cents a dozen in
busy season to 30 cents in slack season. "That's
to pay me interest on my money," he explained.
He does not cut the selling price of the flower.
The extra profit is his.
The time of the ending of the season is more
uniform than the time of beginning. In nearly
three-fourths of the shops it ends in April or May,
the exact date depending upon the place of Easter
in the calendar. The dates when the season be-
gan and ended in the shops investigated are given
in Tables 7 and 8.
The facts given here show the fluctuations of the
trade. The effect of these fluctuations on the
44
THE SEASONS AND UNEMPLOYMENT
workers is read in such signs as the short length of
time they hold their positions and their tendency
to drift from shop to shop, their reasons for leaving,
TABLE 7. — MONTH OF BEGINNING OF BUSY SEASON
IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWER SHOPSa
Month of beginning of busy season
Shops in which busy season
began in month specified
July
August
September
October
November . . .
December
January
" Busy all the year" ....
Seasons too irregular to be classified .
4
18
31
15
5
19
5
5
Total
113
a Of 1 14 firms investigated, one did not supply information.
TABLE 8. — MONTH OF ENDING OF BUSY SEASON
IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWER SHOPSa
Month of ending of busy season
Shops in which busy season
ended in month specified
March
April
May
June
July
"Busy all the year" ....
Seasons too irregular to be classified .
3
24
58
17
1
5
5
Total
»I3
a Of 114 firms investigated, one did not supply information.
45
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
their employment in other occupations during dull
seasons, and the amount of time lost during the
twelve months of the year. Choosing as typical
the last positions held by the workers interviewed,
the brief duration of "jobs" in the flower trade is
shown in Table 9.
TABLE 9. — LENGTH OF TIME FOR WHICH WOMEN
WERE EMPLOYED IN LATEST POSITIONS IN
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER TRADEa
WOMEN EMPLOYED SPECIFIED
LENGTH OF TIME IN
Length of time employed
Last posi-
tion left
Present position, if
worker was still in
her first position
in the trade
Less than i month ....
1 month and less than 3 months .
3 months and less than 6 months.
6 months and less than 9 months.
9 months and less than 12 months.
15
20
16
14
8
3
4
5
6
Less than 1 year ....
1 year and less than 2 years
2 years and less than 3 years
3 years and less than 5 years
5 years and less than 10 years .
10 years and less than 21 years .
73
22
5
10
7
1
19
6
8
10
6
2
Total
118
61
a Of the 174 women interviewed, five did not supply information
on this point.
In tabulating the duration of the last position
held, those who were still in their first positions
were separated from the others, since their em-
ployment had not terminated and therefore its
46
I •••.
A Cutter with Heavy Hammer
Coloring the Petals
THE SEASONS AND UNEMPLOYMENT
length could not be stated. This separate group
numbered 51, and of these 19 had been flower
makers less than one year. In one case, on the
other hand, the position had already been held
twenty-one years. Of the 1 18 whose last position
in the trade could be definitely measured, 73 had
held their last jobs less than one year, — an indica-
tion that frequent change in employment is typical
of the experiences of a large majority.
A count of the number of shops in which these
flower makers had worked in the twelve months
preceding the interview showed that only two in
every five reported only one place of employment,
while nearly an equal proportion had worked in
two or three different establishments, and the re-
mainder had changed from one workplace to an-
other four or five times. An investigator's com-
ment on the record of one flower maker shows how
discouraging these frequent changes are for the
workers. "She wishes she could find some place
that would last all year round. She says that as
soon as she gets started in any work and begins to
make money, it gets slack and she must search for
something else."
It may be asked why it should be necessary to
change from one shop to another in the same trade,
since similar seasonal conditions are commonly
supposed to prevail in all establishments producing
the same goods. The facts already stated, how-
ever, show how widely the seasons vary in different
shops. This is due partly to the superior efficiency
47
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
of one firm over another in securing orders, partly
to the reputation of one shop in producing a line of
goods which happens at the moment to be most
fashionable, and partly to various other causes of
success or failure. At any rate it is true that not
only is the year divided into dull and busy seasons,
but within the busy season employment fluctuates
in a way which cannot be foreseen. As an example
of variations from season to season, one employer in
a small shop showed his payroll for corresponding
weeks in two successive years. In 1909 the total
wages paid out in the second week in May amounted
to $113.42, while in the same week in 19 10 the
total fell to $15. "The season depends on what
takes," said an employer. "This is a bad busi-
ness," said another. " At one time there is so much
to be done you'd give any wage to a girl, and at
another time you can not give your goods away.
There are plenty of girls in the trade but the
trouble is that too many are wanted at one time
for only a short period."
Such uncertainty accounts for many changes
among the workers. That there are other factors,
however, is shown in the following tabulation
(Table 10) of reasons given by the workers for
loss of positions in flower shops.
The table shows that the ending of the season
accounts for the loss of positions in two-fifths of
the cases considered, but it indicates also the num-
ber of other factors that enter into the causes of
irregular employment. The failure or removal of
48
THE SEASONS AND UNEMPLOYMENT
firms; the return to other work previously tried;
dissatisfaction with conditions; illness; disagree-
ment with forewomen or others in the workrooms;
and "to advance," the hope of getting ahead
faster in some other shop, — these all contribute
to irregularity of employment. Some of them,
TABLE 10. — REASONS FOR LEAVING POSITIONS IN
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER SHOPS, AS STATED BY
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
POSITIONS LEFT FOR
EACH SPECIFIED
Reasons for leaving positions
REASON
Number
Per cent
Slack season
90
42
To advance — higher wages or better work .
41
«9
Disagreement, etc
15
7
Firm failed, moved, etc
13
6
Dissatisfaction with conditions of work
9
4
To return to other work ....
9
4
Illness
6
3
Other miscellaneous reasons
3i
15
Total
214
100
such as " to return to other work " or " to advance,"
are often traceable to seasonal conditions, while
others, such as "disagreement" and other more or
less trivial difficulties counted in the same group,
of reasons, may indicate in many cases a casual
attitude toward the trade, due in large measure
to the disorganized, irregular character of the in-
dustry. It is not conducive to skill or pride in
49
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
one's work to face uncertainty in the length of
employment and to turn periodically to employ-
ment elsewhere, in candy factories, card factories,
ribbon factories, sewing trades, paper box making,
saleswork, packing chandeliers, packing olives,
wrapping electrical novelties, embroidering, ma-
chine operating on underwear or children's dresses,
making neckties, sewing rings on overalls, or
painting pipes. All these occupations are repre-
sented in the group of girls whom we interviewed.
In spite of this versatility in combining trades,
steady employment the year round is very un-
usual among the girls who are flower makers in the
busy months in that trade. In every interview
the visitor discussed with the girl the amount of
time lost in the preceding twelve months. The
reports of 105 appear in Tables 11 and 12, the
TABLE 11. — TIME LOST IN THE YEAR PRECEDING
DATE OF INTERVIEW FROM ALL CAUSES BY
WOMEN EMPLOYED IN ARTIFICIAL
FLOWER MAKING4
Time lost
Women losing the
time specified
"No time"
Less than i month
1 month and less than 3 months .
3 months and less than 6 months .
6 months and over
15
32
35
21
2
Total reporting
105
aOf 1 74 women interviewed, 41 had not been wage-earners during
the past full year, and 28 did not supply definite information.
50
THE SEASONS AND UNEMPLOYMENT
first indicating time lost for all causes, and the
second showing the loss due to slack season.
TABLE 12. — TIME LOST IN THE YEAR PRECEDING
DATE OF INTERVIEW BECAUSE OF SLACK
SEASON BY WOMEN EMPLOYED IN
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKING a
Time lost
Women losing the
time specified
"No time"
Less than I month
I month and less than 3 months .
3 months and less than 6 months .
6 months and over
29
31
3i
13
Total reporting
105
aOf 174 women interviewed, 41 had not been wage-earners during
the past full year, and 28 did not supply definite information.
These figures are a record of the time actually
lost, in spite of employment in other occupations
when the season of flower making was over. Thus
they do not show the total time out of work in
the flower trade. Furthermore, such data are
liable to contain the error of understatement,
since the worker often fails to recall frequent
losses of short intervals whose combined total
may be considerable. According to Table 1 1
only 15 girls, or one-seventh, reported no time
lost for any cause. Over half had been out of
work a month or more, due to the same variety
of causes already listed as reasons for leaving
positions. Because of slack season alone, 31 lost
51
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
less than a month, an equal number were out of
work from one to three months, while 1 3 lost time
varying from three to six months. The effect
of these losses on yearly income will be discussed
in the chapter on wages. It may be roughly
estimated here, however, that after workers have
followed several different occupations in the
course of a year only about one girl in seven will
have received wages for fifty-two weeks.
Nearly half of the 174 flower makers interviewed
had worked on fancy or ostrich feathers during
their careers. Ability to turn to this trade is the
solution of the seasonal problem most often urged
by employers and workers. The close connection
between these two industries has already been
described. The manufacture of ostrich feathers
usually stands as a separate industry with a longer
season of work, but fancy feather making and the
manufacture of artificial flowers are twin trades
whose seasons for the most part do not overlap but
rather fit into one another, making it possible for
workers to turn from one to the other. Of the 1 14
flower shops investigated, 54 manufactured also
fancy feathers. This number is not a fixed one,
for flower factories may add feather departments,
and vice versa, or the flower or feather department
of a millinery supply house may be discontinued
without involving any great change of policy on
the part of the firm. From the point of view of
the workers, however, opinions differ as to the
feasibility of thus combining the two occupations.
52
THE SEASONS AND UNEMPLOYMENT
A brief description of the fancy feather trade at
this point seems desirable.
The industry includes all feather manufacture
other than ostrich feathers; for example, quills,
birds, marabous, aigrettes, "paradises/' and the
making of all sorts of marvellous combinations
which no bird has ever worn. As in flower mak-
ing, dyeing is one of the most important of the
processes and it is done by men. The processes in
the girls' department are "stringing/' or tying the
feathers at intervals on a cord in preparation for
dyeing; "steaming" them, or holding them over
boiling water to make them pliable or to give
them certain effects; "preparing," or cleaning and
assorting the feathers. The feathers are then
pasted or sewed on frames in different designs, such
as heads, breasts, wings; or they may be wired or
branched into various styles of feather ornaments.
The stemming or papering of the free ends of
wire is usually the final process for completing the
product for sale to milliners.
A large Broadway flower and feather factory
employing ioo girls is an example of the combina-
tion of the two occupations, since the same work-
ers are taught both. The forewoman said that
t the flower season begins in October and ends in
May, and the feather season is nominally from
May to October. Usually, however, there is a
month or two between seasons, so that the workers
who combine the two trades cannot count on
more than ten months of employment in the year.
53
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
This statement was borne out by the testimony
of a worker who had learned the flower trade
fifteen years ago and who is now employed alter-
nately in flower making and fancy feather making.
She has advanced to the position of forewoman
and designer in both trades. She said that the
flower season lasts from September to May, that
there is very little occupation in it in June, and
that then the fancy feather season starts, lasting
until Thanksgiving Day, thus overlapping a little
with the autumn season in flower making. Thus
although June is dull, and the autumn flower
season uncertain, the worker who understands
both flower and feather making will have a much
longer period of employment than would be pos-
sible if she had learned only flower making.
On the other hand, many workers object to the
feather trade because, they say, it is unpleasant
work, and they believe it to be unhealthy. One
girl who had combined flower making with the
mounting of fancy feathers and had thus avoided
the loss of any time, complained of the dirt and the
dust especially in the process of taking the bones
from wings. Another, who worked on ostrich
feathers, said that she was obliged to keep her hair
covered during her work and that she felt "choked
up" at the end of the day. Others mentioned the
fact that the dust and the small particles which
flew off from the feathers when they were sewing
them hurt their throats and "often gave girls
consumption. "
54
THE SEASONS AND UNEMPLOYMENT
Employers recognized these objections. One
with a force of 50 hands who manufactures both
flowers and feathers said that very few of his em-
ployes combined both occupations. "The two
trades are utterly different. Only the branchers
can pass easily from one to the other." Another
employer said that the necessity to serve an ap-
prenticeship at lower pay prevented flower makers
from working on feathers. " If they can earn $10
at flowers they don't want to go back to $4.00 or
$5.00 to learn feathers. Moreover, a good flower
maker is rarely a good fancy feather maker/ '
Whether these opinions of employers as to the
desirability of a combination of two occupations
be correct or not, the feather trade, for reasons
already given, cannot and does not completely
solve the problem of the irregularity of the
seasons for all flower makers. This is proved by
the fact that feathers are made in less than half
of the flower factories investigated, and that only
85, less than half of the flower makers interviewed,
could work on feathers. Moreover, as already
noted, even the larger firms who manufacture both
flowers and feathers, and who say that they keep
their workers "all year round," report that "be-
tween seasons," that is, in December and in June,
the workers have a "vacation" (without pay) of
three weeks or a month. This is better, of course,
than being laid off indefinitely, for the worker is
practically sure of returning at a date known in
advance; but with wages at their present level, to
55
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
most workers this interval of unemployment is a
serious hardship.
Yet no method of lengthening the seasons of
employment for flower makers is as yet advocated
or attempted by workers or employers. Laymen
who talk about the "marvelous organization of
modern industries" need only inquire into the
methods of steadying the seasons in almost any
trade which employs a large number of women, to
discover proof of a most lamentable lack of effi-
cient organization. So few are the efforts made
in this direction that we are forced to the conclusion
that business conditions have not compelled manu-
facturers to give attention to the problem.* In
other words, it appears to be not so difficult to
secure workers in the busy season as to compel
firms to devise means of prolonging their employ-
* An employer who read this report contradicted this statement in
so far as it implied indifference on the part of manufacturers. " If
anybody could invent a method for us of avoiding slack season we'd
give him a fortune," he said. Nevertheless, judging by present con-
ditions, it seems clear that employers and workers accept the fact of
irregular employment as inevitable, and no concerted effort has been
made to solve the problem. This statement is corroborated by the
fact that an association of artificial flower manufacturers, organized
in 1908, discussed first of all not the lack of work in dull season but
the inconvenience of having their workers "enticed" from one factory
to another in busy season. The Millinery Trade Review, November,
1908, thus reported the first meeting: "Itis thedesire of the promoters
to enlist the interest of every manufacturer of artificial flowers in
New York and vicinity as members of the organization. The state-
ment made by those present regarding the enticing of help from one
factory to another makes it imperative that some arrangement should
be entered into whereby the trade at large would be protected against
extra inducements offered to secure the help of competing manu-
facturers and thus crippling concerns in the height of the busy season.
There are other matters of equal importance that the manufacturers
hope to take up in the near future."
56
A Building which Houses Three Flower Factories
Once a Residence, Now a Flower Factory
THE SEASONS AND UNEMPLOYMENT
ment through twelve months. In reply to ques-
tions on the subject, 2 1 , or 18 per cent, of the firms
reported that they had no difficulty in obtaining
workers even in the busy season ; 77, or 68 per cent,
said that they could not secure enough; and 14
per cent were indifferent to the question, appar-
ently regarding it as by no means impossible to
find workers when they needed them. Many
complained of lack of efficient employes but all
agreed that if there were any scarcity from the
point of view of numbers, it was only at the height
of the season.
At that time the "cheap and docile home work-
ers" are a great resource for the employers.
Competition for work is keen among them. After
the long dull months when they have no work, they
are eager to toil until late at night, producing in
a short time enough goods to supply the market for
the season. It is the volume of business rather
than its distribution through the year which
chiefly determines the success of the manufacturer.
Employers would doubtless find a more even dis-
tribution convenient, but steady production in
their workrooms is not enough of a factor in their
success to compel them to take steps toward
prolonging the season for their workers. On the
other hand, it is the universal testimony of workers
of experience that their welfare depends upon
steady work, and that overwork for a few months
followed by part time or idleness is for them a most
serious calamity.
57
CHAPTER IV
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
THAT the short and irregular season is a
calamity for flower makers becomes more
evident when the facts about wages in this
trade are known. Furthermore, information about
the home conditions and family responsibilities of
these workers shows that low earnings and unem-
ployment affect not only the individual wage-
earner but serve constantly to undermine the
standard of living of the family group.
It may be well to begin with the most favorable
view of the situation, and to discuss employers'
statements regarding the maximum earnings of
the. best paid flower makers in a busy week of the
year in their establishments. Tables 1 3 and 14 are
based on a tabulation of this information. The
wages of forewomen are excluded. The tables do
not show minimum earnings or the wage of the
majority but indicate the number of establish-
ments in which one or more of the women em-
ployes receive the stated maximum, and the
number of women working in them. Table 14
shows not the number of women receiving the\
specified wages but the total number employed in
shops whose owners stated that they paid that
58
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
wage as a maximum to at least one of their women
employes.
TABLE 13. — ARTIFICIAL FLOWER SHOPS, BY MAXI-
MUM WEEKLY WAGES PAID TO WOMENa
Maximum weekly wages paid
to women
SHOPS IN WHICH THE MAXIMUM
WEEKLY WAGE PAID TO WOMEN
WAS AS SPECIFIED
Time work
Piece work
Total
Under $10 ....
$10 and under $12 .
$12 and under $15 .
$15 and under $20 .
$20 and over ....
19
20
20
9
1
5
7
17
^11
2
24
27
37
20
3
Total
69
42
in
a Of 1 14 firms investigated, three did not supply information.
TABLE 14. — WOMEN EMPLOYED IN ARTIFICIAL
FLOWER SHOPS, BY MAXIMUM WEEKLY WAGES
PAID TO WOMEN IN THE SHOPS IN WHICH
THEY WERE EMPLOYED a
Maximum weekly wages
WOMEN EMPLOYED IN SHOPS IN WHICH
THE MAXIMUM WEEKLY WAGE PAID
TO WOMEN WAS AS SPECIFIED
paid to women
Time
work
Piece
work
Total
Number
Per cent
Under $10
$10 and under $12 .
$12 and under $15 .
$15 and under $20 .
$20 and over
641
1,009
1,343
82
66
3i7
793
494
105
707
1,326
2,136
865
187
13-5
25.4
40.9
16.6
3.6
Total ....
3,446
1,775
5,221
100. 0
aOf 114 firms investigated, three employing 19 women did not
supply information.
59
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
In nearly four-fifths of the shops, 88 in number,
employing 4,169, or 80 per cent of the total num-
ber of women in the trade, the highest weekly
wage received by any woman is less than $15,
while 39 per cent are in shops in which the maxi-
mum never reaches $12. The maximum is $12
or more in a larger proportion of shops paying
their best workers by the piece than of those pay-
ing them by time.*
These figures show maximum possibilities. The
important question to ask is how many women
in the shops are found in these maximum groups,
and how large a proportion receive much less.
The answer is contained both in official census
figures and in the data of our investigation. In
taking the census of 1905, agents of the United
States government copied the payrolls for one
week in 90 artificial flower and feather establish-
ments in the United States, securing wage records
of 1,845 women. The facts are not stated sep-
arately for flower makers, nor are they given for
New York City; but as so large a proportion of
the flower and feather makers in the whole United
States are in New York,f the facts may be used
as an indication of conditions in this city. The
figures were the weekly earnings in a busy part of
the year, and in them no allowance was made for
slack seasons. In Table 15, the proportion of
* Time workers receive a definite weekly wage. Piece workers are
paid by the number of flowers produced.
t Four-fifths of the women employed live in New York City.
See p. 6.
60
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
women in each of the wage groups is shown and
compared with the proportion of women in the cor-
responding wage groups in all industries. The com-
parative earnings of men in flower and feather
shops are also indicated.
TABLE 15. — WEEKLY EARNINGS OF MEN AND
WOMEN EMPLOYED IN THE ARTIFICIAL FLOWER
AND FEATHER MAKING INDUSTRY, AND OF WOMEN
EMPLOYED IN ALL MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES,
UNITED STATES, 1905 a
EMPLOYES
IN FLOWER
WOMEN IN ALL
AND FEATHE!
MANUFACTUR-
Weekly earnings of
Men
Women
ING INDUSTRIES
employes
Num-
Per
Num-
Per
Num-
Per
ber
cent
ber
cent
ber
cent
Under $3.00
7
2.7
245
13-3
43.858
7-5
$3.00 and under $4.00
10
3
9
221
12
0
64, 1 70
10.9
$4.00 and under $5.00
14
5
5
264
14
3
88,657
15. 1
$5.00 and under $6.00
12
4
7
290
15
7
95,674
16.3
f 6.00 and under $7.00
14
5
5
i«5
10
0
97,3 » 1
16.5
$7.00 and under $8.00
16
6
3
157
8
5
68,192
11. 6
f 8.00 and under $9.00
n
6
6
145
7
9
47,170
8.0
$9.00 and under $10
42
16
4
IOI
5
5
34,050
5-8
$10 and under $12 ,
40
"5
6
1 12
6
1
29,633
5.0
$12 and under $15 .
37
14
5
87
4
7
14,294
2.4
$15 and over .
47
18
3
38
2
0
5,590
0.9
Total .
256
100. 0
1,845
100. 0
588,599
100. 0
Average weekly earn-
ings
$ 1 0 . 80
$6.20
$6.17
a United States Census. Bulletin 93, Earnings of Wage-Earners,
Manufactures, pp. 82, 90, and 98. 1905.
According to these census figures, more than
half the women, 55.3 per cent, in the flower and
61
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
feather industry earned less than $6.00 in a busy
week of the year. Slightly more than one-fourth,
483, earned $8.00 or over, and only about one in
Number of Women
100 150 200
290
Earnings
$15 and over
$12 and under $15
$10 and under $12
$9 and under $10
$8 and under $9
$7 and under $3
$6 and under $7
$5 and under $6
$4 and under $5
$3 and under $4
Under $3
0 60 100
Total number of women considered .
Chart II. — Women Employed in Artificial Flower and Feather
Making, by Weekly Earnings, United States, 1905
16 rose to $12 or over. Chart II visualizes these
facts.
A larger group, 13.3 per cent in the flower and
feather trade as against 7.5 per cent in all industries,
earned less than $3.00. The point in the wage scale
at which the groups divide, half earning less and
half earning more, is between $5.00 and $6.00 for
artificial flower and feather makers and between
$6.00 and $7.00 for women in all industries.
62
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
Furthermore, a slightly larger proportion of flower
and feather makers, 6.7 per cent as compared with
3.3 per cent in all industries, earned $ 12 or more.
The contrast be-tween the earnings of men and
the earnings of women is marked. Larger groups
of men are found earning above $9.00 than below
that sum, — just the reverse of the figures for
women. This showing does not mean necessarily
that women in the trade receive unequal pay for
equal work, for men and women, as has been said,
work in different departments. It is simply an
added proof of the statement that in those trades
in which men have one set of tasks and women
another, the tasks of men are more remunerative.
The facts about the flower trade do not supply us
with conclusive reasons for the difference in re-
muneration, but they justify the statement that in
this trade, which at first glance would be consid-
ered pre-eminently women's work, women's wages
average about 60 per cent of the wages of men.
Wages differ for different processes, but a tabu-
lation of employers' statements on this point
would be of little value, as occupations called by
the same name are not equal in grade in all fac-
tories. With the exception of designing and
dyeing, "branching" is the most remunerative
work, with "making" second; but as one employer
pointed out, these operations are not standardized,
and therefore wages are not uniform. Neverthe-
less, the general range of weekly wages as stated
by employers is shown in the following list.
63
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
PROCESS AND METHOD
OF PAYMENT
;
WEEKLY WAGES
Designing
Time work $25.00
Dyeing
Time work
$22
00
Branching
Time work
$6
oo-$i5.oo
Piece work
$5
oo-$i8.oo
Making
Time work
$3
oo-$i5.oo
Piece work
15
oo-$i5.oo
Rose making
Time work
$4
oo-$i3.oo
Piece work
$4
oo-$i5.oo
Foliage making
Time work
$5
00- $8.00
Piece work
*7
00- $8 00
Goffering
Time work
$7
00- $8.00
Neither the statements of employers nor official
transcripts of payrolls tell us how long the workers
in the various wage groups have been employed.
This information must be secured from the girls
themselves. Table 16 gives data for the 174 girls
interviewed during the course of the investigation,
and shows their wages correlated with years of
experience.
For those who have been at work less than one
year the average weekly wage is $3.62 ; one to three
years, $5.84; three to five years, $7.74; five to ten
years, $9.11; and ten years or longer, $11.65.
Roughly speaking, the increase amounts to about
$1.00 a year, with small chance of earning more
than $12 even if the experience be longer than ten
64
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
years. The nine who earned more than that in-
cluded a skilled brancher of twenty years' ex-
perience, an assistant forewoman in charge of stock
in the flower department of one of the largest
millinery supply houses, a brancher of eleven
TABLE 16. — WEEKLY WAGES OF WOMEN EMPLOYED
IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKING BY YEARS
OF EMPLOYMENT IN THE TRADEa
WOMEN WHO HAVE BEEN EMPLOYED IN
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKING
Weekly wages
Less
1 year
and
3 years
and
5 years
and
All
women
than
less
less
less
1 year
than
3 years
than
5 years
than
10 years
or more
Under $5.00
39
12
1
52
$5.00 and under $6.00
3
10
4
1
18
$6.00 and under $7.00
7
11
7
1
26
$7.00 and under $8.00
8
7
3
1
20
$8.00 and under $9.00
4
5
2
1
12
$9.00 and under $10
1
6
5
3
15
$10 and under $12 .
1
6
6
5
»9
$12 and under $20 .
1
2
5
8
$20 and over .
1
1
Total .
5i
47
37
19
17
171
Average weekly wages
$3.62
I5.84
$7-74
$9.11
$11.65
$6.72
a Of 174 women interviewed, three did not supply information.
years' experience, and a rose maker who in the
course of her fifteen years of work in flower shops
had held a position as forewoman but preferred
now to have less responsibility with equal wages.
The fifth was a forewoman with thirty-seven years'
65
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
experience, and the sixth, who earned the maximum
of $30, was a forewoman and designer in a large
factory manufacturing both flowers and feathers.
The three others in the higher wage groups had had
less than ten years' experience, — one a forewoman
who had worked eight years in a flower factory,
another a forewoman of seven years' experience,
and the last the niece of an employer who was in
charge of the giving out of work to a large force of
home workers. Each of these three earned $12.
The average weekly wage of the whole group, ex-
cluding forewomen, was $6.37. If we include
forewomen and drop all workers under sixteen
years of age, as was done in the census enumera-
tion of 1905, we have an average for our group of
$7.24 as compared with the census average of
$6.20.* The average weekly wage of all women
eighteen years of age and over, including fore-
women in our group, was $8.28.
These statements regarding the whole group
should not be understood as indicating that the
rate of increase is fixed and invariable for every
worker in the trade. Girls who had worked ten
years or longer in flower shops were found to be
earning a wage of $6.00 or $7.00; and, on the other
hand, workers of two or three years' experience had
received $10 or $11 in their pay envelopes. In
fact, the table shows considerable variation in
wage among girls of each group whose experience
* United States Census, Bulletin 93, Earnings of Wage-Earners,
Manufactures, p. 98. 1905.
66
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
was of equal length. For example, for the girls
who had worked one or two years in the trade the
wage varied from $3.25 to $10, and for those who
had worked three or four years, from $4.50 to $12.
The fixing of the wage seems indeed to be a
matter of chance. It was described by a fore-
woman, who said that although a definite percent-
age of the price of the flower was always allowed
for salesmen's pay and firm's profits, the wage
rate was determined by the forewoman's guess.
She made it as low as possible without causing a
spontaneous uprising in the workroom. As no
trade union has been developed to force flower
manufacturers to adopt a definite wage scale it is
inevitable that variety and fluctuation should
characterize the earnings of flower makers.
Nationality is also said to be a factor in wage
variation* Again and again an investigator hears
the statement that Italian girls in the trade under-
bid the workers of other nationalities and thus de-
press wages. For example, one young Russian
girl said of her Italian fellow-workers that they
are quick and "work like horses," but that "they
spoil the trade because they don't stick up for
their prices"; that "an American girl will say she
won't make a flower for less than 10 cents a gross,
and the Italian girl will come forward and say she
will do it for 8 cents." The same sort of comment
is occasionally made by employers, who complain
of the changing personnel of the workers, and the
* See pages 30-35.
67
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
lowering of standards through the low pay ac-
cepted by Italians. It was therefore with great
interest that we tabulated separately the wages of
Italian workers for the purpose of tentative com-
parison with the wages of girls of other nationali-
ties. The results are shown in Table 17.
Of the whole group investigated 124 were
Italians or the children of Italian fathers, and 50
were of other nationalities, including those from
Russia, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and the
United States. The table shows that the average
wage of the Italians was $6.64 as compared with an
average of $6.72 earned by the group of other
nationalities. Closer analysis according to years
of experience is, however, a fairer basis of com-
parison, especially when the numbers considered
are small. In the groups of workers of long ex-
perience the cases are too few for conclusive state-
ments. In the groups of workers having an ex-
perience of one to three years the average wage
is $5.54 for Italians and $6.32 for other nationali-
ties, while among the succeeding group the Italians'
average wage is $8.40 compared with $11.77,
indicating a lower rate of earnings for Italians in
every group except the learners of less than a year's
experience. Caution is needed in interpreting such
data, however. The influence of any nationality
on trade standards is to be determined not merely
by differences in wages received at a given time,
but also by statistics of different periods in the
history of the industry from the time of the en-
68
Making Foliage
t
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if #
if ^ '
% £
'JH
^P^x
gr
-
<
■# | .
HWBMsf
Pressing Petals
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
Z a*
S *
? o
°%
° s
5 d-
S z w
O S Q
* 5 <
^ < *
2 S H
£ * w
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69
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
trance of workers of another race. Unfortunately,
such data are not available for previous years in
the artificial flower trade. In a city like New
York, however, where so many of the wage-earners
are foreign born or the children of foreign born
parents, questions regarding the effect which
immigrant workers have on industrial standards
are of the utmost importance. The rapid increase
in the number of Italians in the population of New
York makes the economic standards of Italian
women workers a matter of prime importance to
all other women in industry.
Statistics of weekly wages cannot give a just
impression of the real income of flower makers
unless some effort be made to estimate the effect
of irregular employment on yearly earnings. Such
an estimate is most difficult. Indeed, it cannot
be satisfactorily computed without a continuous
study of wage-earners' budgets for a period of a
year, to ascertain not only the wages received
from one establishment (the sort of information
which could be secured from payrolls), but the full
history of workers who have drifted from shop to
shop within the twelve months. Such a continu-
ous study was impossible in this investigation.
Instead, an attempt has been made to estimate
the approximate yearly income of the flower
makers interviewed, basing the estimate on a com-
bination of facts regarding wages and information
about time lost from work in the twelve months
preceding the interview. As already pointed out
70
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
in the chapter on the seasons, workers frequently
forget small periods of unemployment which may
aggregate no small loss in a year, so that an es-
timate of their total income is liable to overstate
the amount received. Nevertheless, information
on this topic is so much needed that even frag-
mentary and uncertain data are worth considering.
Table 18 gives the estimate for 82 flower makers,
and covers not only wages received in flower shops
but earnings in all occupations in one year.
TABLE 18. — APPROXIMATE YEARLY INCOME OF
WOMEN EMPLOYED IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWER
MAKING WHO HAD BEEN WAGE-EARNERS
NOT LESS THAN ONE YEARa
Yearly income
Flower makers whose income
was as specified
Under $100 .
$100 and under $200 .
$200 and under $300 .
$300 and under $400 .
$400 and under $500 .
$500 and under $600 .
$600 and over
1
10
31
19
14
6
1
Total
82
aThe figures given represent income from all occupations in
which the women were employed, and not from artificial flower mak-
ing alone.
One-half the group, 42, had a yearly income of
less than $300. The others had earned from $300
to $700, but only seven of these had reached $500.
One of the most interesting aspects of these figures
71
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
is their indication that from the point of view of
yearly income weekly wage statistics must be dis-
counted. The average weekly wage of all the
women investigated who had had a year or
more of experience was $7.76. If employment
were steady throughout the year this average
weekly wage would amount to an average yearly
income of about $400. Nevertheless, half the
workers whose earnings in twelve months could be
estimated received less than $300. A rough com-
parison of these last two statements would indicate
that the tax made by irregular employment on the
income of flower makers amounts to about two
dollars a week, — a sum by no means insignificant.
Without some knowledge of the manner of living
of the workers, statistics of wages received are as
dry bones. Human interest centers rather more
on expenditure than on income, and it is according
to our knowledge of the buying power of a dol-
lar that we interpret statements about wages.
Furthermore, the relation between the two is funda-
mental in a different sense. Economic pressure is
recognized as an important factor in the wage
bargain, and signs are not lacking to indicate that
the wage received is in inverse ratio to the pressure.
It is the worker nearest starvation who is most
likely to accept starvation wages. If this be true,
then the worker's standard of life will determine in
part the wage received. In a trade where there is
no collective bargaining but the arranging of terms
of employment is left to individuals, the poverty
72
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
of applicants for positions will occasion a constant
downward pull on wage standards. On the other
hand, it is even more obvious that as the wage
standards in a trade become more or less fixed
within certain limits they will determine the stand-
ard of living possible to the workers, and therefore
tend to draw to the trade workers from those
families in the community whose manner of living
most nearly approaches that wage level. To
speak of "the standard of living" or even "the
minimum living wage" as though it were a single
fact capable of definite determination for a whole
complex community does not seem in accord with
actual conditions. It is more reasonable to be-
lieve that standards differ in different occupations
and that they must be measured with reference to
the two main factors, trade conditions and family
requirements.
In this investigation the subject of inquiry was
the trade, and in interviewing workers about their
trade experiences it was not always possible to take
time for complete investigation of home condi-
tions, especially as a second or third visit is often
necessary to secure this more personal information
regarding the family. Nevertheless, data about
the relationship of the 174 flower makers to the
head of the household and the more detailed in-
formation secured in 128 families about the work
of the father and the mother and other wage-
earners in their family, size of households, rent paid,
and number of children not yet old enough to
73
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
work, are an indication of the home standards and
family responsibilities not only of those inter-
viewed but of a still wider group of flower makers
of which our group was representative.
Flower makers in New York do not come from
a distance to their work. They live nearby and
save carfare. Only nine of those interviewed re-
ported that they paid carfare going to and from
their shops. Only eight, or 5 per cent, lived north
of Fourteenth Street. West of Broadway and
south of Fourteenth Street were found the homes
of 12 1, or 69 percent, while 45, or 26 percent, lived
on the east side of Broadway, south of Fourteenth
Street.
Girls who board alone in New York are not
found in flower shops, doubtless because the wages
paid are too low to enable them to support them-
selves. Two of the 174 made no statement
about their household relationships. Only three
were boarding or living alone, without the protec-
tion of a family or other relatives. For the re-
maining 169, or 97 per cent of the group, who lived
with their families (including the 10 married
women*), the protection given them by the home
brought with it a more or less heavy share of re-
sponsibility for maintaining the household. In
the 128 families under discussion were 807 mem-
bers, and 545 of these contributed in some way to
* It should be remembered that in this chapter we are describing
women at work in the shops. Among home workers the proportion
of married women is much larger.
74
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
the family budget. In only 93 of the 128 families
was the father living and at home, and even in
those cases he was not always a wage-earner; in
29 cases the father was dead; in six he was not liv-
ing with his family; and in eight he was ill or too
old to work. In 85, the father was a contributor
either as a wage-earner (58 cases), or from "in-
dependent business" (21 cases), or, in one case,
through helping in home work. In five households
the father's work was not stated. The wage-
earning pursuits included professional work (a
rabbi, a secretary, and a translator) ; the trades of
carpenter, cabinet maker, wood turner, cooper,
painter, mason, marble cutter, and tailor; employ-
ment in factories manufacturing furs, men's caps,
belts, suspenders, hats, bags, mirrors, clocks,
cigars, candy, artificial flowers, and piano strings;
work in wine shops, butcher shops, and saloons;
employment in a city department, and as driver,
elevator runner, janitor and cleaner, bootblack, and
day laborer. The "independent business" men,
as distinct from wage-earners, were: a real estate
agent, a contractor, storekeeper, keeper of a fruit
stand, barber, bootblack, coal dealer, plumber,
tinsmith, shoemaker, and two owners of small
factories, one of whom manufactured bronzes and
one feather dusters.
Data were obtained concerning the weekly wages
of 33 of the 58 wage-earning fathers employed at
the dates of the interviews. Of these, 1 1 earned less
than $10 a week, nine earned $10 to $12, four $12
75
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
to $15, and seven $15 to $20, while one received a
wage of $24, and one, $25. The maximum wages
were reported by a longshoreman and a marble
cutter. The group earning $15 to $20 included a
furniture maker, cabinet maker, worker on mirrors,
presser in a tailor shop, two hod-carriers each of
whom received $18, and a bootblack. The four
who reported wages of $ 1 2 and less than $ 1 5 were
a fur dresser, worker on bags, candy maker, and a
driver. The larger group, who earned $10 but
less than $12, included a wood-turner, cooper,
worker on belts, worker on piano strings, employe
in a wine shop, bartender, hod-carrier, porter, and
a janitor. The lowest paid group of 1 1 consisted
of a translator earning $6.00, a mason, worker on
suspenders, bag maker, tailor, employe in a butcher
shop, day laborer, elevator runner, and three factory
cleaners.
The figures take no account of the irregularity
of employment which is characteristic of many of
the occupations listed. To ascertain the earn-
ings of the men who had "their own business" was
difficult, and the results very doubtful. Every-
where in our visits, however, we were met by the
same story: that the father could not earn enough
the year round to support the family; that rent
and other necessary expenditures were growing
constantly larger; that the family could not live
without the wages of the daughters; and in a large
number of cases that the mothers must also con-
tribute to the income.
76
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
Of 122 mothers living in these 128 families,*
76 contributed to the family income by direct
earnings, several of them combining two or more
occupations. Seventeen of these worked outside
the home. Of these 17, nine were themselves
flower makers, of whom eight were included in the
group interviewed; one was an embroiderer earning
$12 a week; two finished coats or suits at wages of
$4.00; one kept a day nursery receiving $4.50; one
did day's work; two were factory cleaners at $6.00
a week; and one was an umbrella sewer, earning
$6.00. Two of the flower makers earned $10,
one $6.00, one $7.00, one $8.00, one $9.00, one $11,
one $12, and one $18. The work done by the
mothers at home included janitor service in 10
families, keeping boarders and lodgers in 1 1 house-
holds, and home manufacture (of flowers, feathers,
embroidery, belts, and corset covers) in 50.
Not only the mothers but many of the sisters of
flower makers and other women relatives living in
these households were also wage-earners contribut-
ing to the family support. They represented a vari-
ety of occupations. They were employed in " finish-
ing" cloaks, underwear, corset covers, and men's
vests; in operating on shirtwaists, underwear, and
veils; in dressmaking; in the manufacture of men's
caps, belts, paper boxes, envelopes, feather dusters,
and fancy feathers for hats; examining sweaters
and petticoats; in making buttonholes, embroider-
* In five cases, the mother was dead, and in one she was not living
at home.
77
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
ing by hand, and in millinery ; in mending goods in a
coat and apron supply house; in stock work, book-
keeping, and saleswork. They numbered 52 in
all. Of these the wages of 37 were ascertained.
Six received less than $5.00, 12 received $5.00 to
$7.00, 14 received $7.00 to $10, three $10 to $12,
one $12 to $15, and one $16.
A count of the total number of contributors to
the family income, including fathers, mothers,
sisters and brothers, in addition to flower makers,
shows that in only two households were flower
makers the only wage-earners. Not counting
home workers, 33 households reported two wage-
earners, 47 three, 27 four, and 17 five, while one
had as many as six and one seven, all uniting in
the family support. In 10 households no men
contributed; the families were supported entirely
by women. In 57 families no women except the
flower makers were at work outside the home; but
in the majority of families three or four wage-
earners shared the burden of supporting the house-
hold.
The households were large. In 59 there were
seven or more members. In the majority of house-
holds there were dependent children under four-
teen, a fact which bears directly on the re-
sponsibilities of flower makers in aiding in the
family support, besides emphasizing the fact that
the need for the mother's employment outside the
home constitutes a grave social problem.
In 46, or more than one-third of the 128 families,
78
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
were children under six years of age, while in the
remaining 82, there was no child under six. In
the majority of families, then, the children had
passed beyond babyhood. In 86, or about two-
thirds, were children of school age, six to fourteen
years old. Older sisters or brothers had gone to
work, while the younger ones were still in school.
This is a different type of family from that some-
times chosen as "normal" in investigations of the
standard of living; namely, one in which the father
is a wage-earner and the children are babies or of
school age. Among these flower makers the time has
come for the children to become wage-earners and
the family begins to break. The father is dead, or
in many cases he is no longer looked to as the main
support. He is "too old to work," or his work
grows more and more irregular as he gives place to
young boys who are crowding into the labor market,
his own sons among them. The family must now
look for an income made up of small sums con-
tributed by the mother, and by the boys and girls
who have passed the legal age required before they
can get their working papers.
These facts should be carefully considered in
any discussion of the wages of working girls in
any trade. A critical period is reached in wage-
earners' households when the older members of the
family are beginning to be burdens and the younger
are not yet strongly enough established economic-
ally to meet new responsibilities. At such a time
the children go into the labor market handicapped,
79
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
instead of being free to choose the job which offers
the best training and promises the happiest and
most profitable future, regardless of immediate
returns. No one who wishes to understand the
causes of poverty can safely neglect consideration
of the wages of working girls who "live at home,"
and whose low wages, because they do so, are re-
garded complacently by men and women who lack
a comprehending knowledge of the responsibil-
ities of daughters in such homes. In the flower
trade the typical flower maker is a member of just
such a breaking family.
The stories told by some of the flower makers
show more vividly than statistics what their home
responsibilities are. One girl, eighteen years old,
had worked four years in paper box factories but
after an injury to her finger from an unguarded
machine she applied at a flower shop for a job as
learner at $4.00 a week. After six months this
sum was increased to $4.50. In May, when inter-
viewed, the dull season had begun and until Sep-
tember she expected to work only three days a
week, earning $2.25. "That isn't enough to pay
for what I eat," she said. She was hoping for a
second increase of 50 cents a week in September,
and she figured that if the family could hold out
until autumn she could work overtime four nights
a week, beginning in November, and in addition
could bring work home at night, from which she
and her mother, her sister, and a brother twelve
years old could earn together $3.00 a week. But
80
Goffering and Pressing
Arranging Flowers and Leaves
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
she feared that she would be obliged to look im-
mediately for work in another trade and miss that
50 cents raise and that opportunity to work over-
time in the shop, and later make flowers at night.
Her father had deserted the family. Her brother,
who had been a driver for a woolen goods house,
had been out of work three months, having lost
his job because of a strike. A younger sister was
a learner in an ostrich feather shop, earning $3.50.
That sum plus the flower maker's $2.25 was at the
moment the family income to support the mother,
two sons, and two daughters., "If my brother
don't get work," said the flower maker, " I'll have
to leave the flower trade. I've worked in a lot of
different places, and I've been out of work a lot,
too. And every time I change, it's always the
same money or less, never a raise. It was all
right in winter when I was making more than $6.00
a week with overtime, but what's $2.00? And
everything has gone up so. We can't eat meat
any more, — only on Sundays."
A young married woman, not quite twenty-five
years old, was obliged to work sometimes in the
shop and sometimes at home to supplement her
husband's earnings. She had been married when
she was sixteen years old, and had four children, a
girl of seven years, another of five years, a boy of
three, and baby of nine months. Her husband was a
driver employed by a dry goods store, but he had
been injured and had had an operation performed.
At best his earnings were $12 a week and for two
81
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
months he had been out of work. When he was
employed the wife helped by home work. She
said, however, that only cheap work is given to
home workers. " If you work night and day you are
lucky if you get $9.00, or even $6.00; $3.00 is more
like it." Whenever her husband was out of work
she was obliged to leave her babies in the care of
her mother and work in a shop nine hours a day.
As she was an expert flower maker, however, she
could earn $10 or $12 in a week, and thus equal her
husband 'swages.
Another flower maker, sixteen years old, was one
of four sisters who supported the family by adding
together the contents of four thin pay envelopes.
The father had been a helpless paralytic a year and
a half before his death. There was a young broth-
er twelve years old. The mother did the house-
work. The flower maker earned $4.50. The oldest
sister, aged twenty-two, an examiner in a skirt
factory, earned $5.00. A sister aged eighteen did
office work, earning $6.00. The youngest girl,
aged fifteen, was learning the flower trade at a
wage of $3.50. Thus $19 was the total weekly in-
come for the support of six persons, and any slack
season in the flower trade was likely to reduce this
weekly sum to $ 1 1 . In the summer the two flower
makers worked on feathers, but during the previous
twelve months the older had been laid off two
weeks at Christmas time and three weeks in June
between the feather and flower season, and the
younger sister had lost four weeks in June for the
82
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
same reason. They lived in three rooms for which
they paid a rent of $ 1 5 a month. " We must crowd
together," they said, "because we don't make
much."
This overcrowding is typical of flower makers'
families. By far the largest number, 98, lived in
threeorfour rooms. Theextremes were two families
each of whom had only one room, and eight who
had six-room flats.* The figures indicating the
number of persons per room are, however, a more
significant index of the standard of living. This
does not mean the number per bedroom, but the
number per room including the kitchen, and any
such unusual luxury as a parlor.
In studies of standards of living it has been
generally agreed that households with an average
of more than one and one-half persons per room
are abnormally crowded. Of the 128 families of
flower makers, but 47, or slightly more than a third,
would be classed as normal, having this amount of
space or more; while 71 of the 1 18 questioned on
this point were overcrowded, 20 being classed in
the group having " more than one and one-half and
less than two persons" to a room, 44 having "two
persons and less than three" to a room, and six
having "three and less than four." One family
crowded seven persons into one room. Such
overcrowding is a convincing sign of an inadequate
standard of living with its usual disastrous effects
♦Five had apartments of two rooms each, six of five rooms,
and in nine cases the number of rooms was not recorded.
83
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
on the welfare of the members of the family. The
rent paid for this space appears in Table 19.
TABLE 19. — MONTHLY RENT PAID BY FAMILIES OF
WOMEN EMPLOYED IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWER
MAKING*
Monthly rent
Families paying each
specified rent
Less than $10
1 10 and under $12
$12 and under $14
$14 and under $16
$16 and under $18
$18 and under $20
$20 and under $25
$25 and over .
6
11
18
21
1
10
1
Total
94
aOf 128 families investigated, 23 did not supply information, six
received free rent for janitor service, and five owned or leased a build-
ing or had rooms in connection with a store.
Of the 94 families that were paying rent, 58
paid amounts varying from $12 to $18 a month.
The figures, however, show much variety, ranging
from $8.50 to $27. As rent is usually the one
item which must be paid monthly in so large a
lump sum, it is the cause of much anxiety in many
of these households, especially in those whose income
is so likely to shrink in dull seasons.
The contribution of girls to their families is not
limited to their wages, for in the evenings they are
obliged to help with the housework, to sew, and to
wash their clothes. "Men don't have to work as
84
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
hard as women," said a married woman who after
a nine-hour day in a shop makes her children's
dresses at home at night. Two young Russian
flower makers, refugees from Odessa, whose mother
was dead, did almost all the housework in the
evening for a household of six, including their
father, who was a painter, their grandmother, a
younger sister of school age, and a boarder. In
Russia, they said, they were not' accustomed to
such hard work. Their father had had a grocery
business and they had owned their home in
Odessa. During the "revolution" they became
refugees, and hid for two weeks in a cellar. They
sold their home for half its value and fled to
America. Here the mother died. She had been
greatly distressed that her girls should go out to
work and that there should be no money to send
the boy to a dental school. In spite of the house-
work at night one of the sisters had taken a course
in a public evening school. The other has always
wished to go, but for the first two years after
reaching America she brought flowers or feathers
home from the factory to work on at night, and
since her mother's death, washing clothes, cooking,
and cleaning have filled her evenings.
It is by no means unusual to find the girls in the
family leaving school to go to work in order to give
their brothers a chance to have a better education.
One Italian girl, now earning |io a week in busy
season as a rose maker, left school and began to
learn the flower trade six years ago at the age of
85
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
thirteen. Her mother made flowers at home. In
supporting the family these two women were co-
workers with the father, a cutter and colorer in a
flower factory. There were two brothers neither
of whom had ever earned money regularly. One
of them, a boy of sixteen, was in the second year
of high school, hoping later to go through a medical
school. The older brother. had just obtained his
M. D. degree. His education had been a heavy
tax on the family. His sister said that during
those years while he was in the medical school, she
had brought home flowers from the shop at night
and had worked sometimes until four or five o'clock
in the morning. "When he graduated," she said,
" I cried all day and was as happy as though I had
graduated myself. I often say to my mother that
we treat my brother as if he were a king, — but I
can't help it."
In the same spirit the oldest daughter in a Rus-
sian family left normal school after the second year
in order that her elder brother might attend col-
lege. Her father was a tailor, Two younger
children were in school. She explained that she
wanted to go back to normal college, but for her
brother a college education was "a matter of a life
position," while for her it was not.
Practically all these flower makers who live at
' home turn their entire earnings into the family
purse. The mother or the head of the household
then uses it for living expenses, giving the girls the
money which they must have for carfare and
86
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
lunches. Rent is the first item to be paid. The
remainder is stretched as far as possible over food,
clothing, insurance, and other important items,
and an occasional expenditure for a trip to Coney
Island or a ticket to a moving picture show. We
found no flower maker living at home who did not
give the bulk of her earnings to the household. I n
other words, we found no "pin-money workers."
Low wages paid to these women who live at home
have far more serious consequences for the com-
munity than the loss of the finery for which work-
ing girls are sometimes supposed to be spending
their strength in factories.
\ Judging then by the home conditions of these
flower makers, not only they but others in the trade
as well as many wage-earners' families in other in-
dustries, are forced at some period of their history
to depend largely, if not entirely, upon the earnings
of women. These families may be poverty strick-
en for no other reason than that their oldest chil-
dren happen to be daughters rather than sons.
Many signs of economic pressure have thus been
noted in the group of flower makers whose home
conditions we have been studying: fathers unable
to contribute enough to support their families,
mothers forced to earn wages, young girls obliged
to go to work as early as possible to help in the sup-
port of younger brothers and sisters, and the family
income still too small to provide the minimum
space required for wholesome living.
The flower maker's income, like that of workers
87
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
in many other trades, is, subject to a variety of
influences beyond her control.
First, the processes of work are not uniform but
vary with the style of flower. Each time a flower
of new design is ordered the labor cost must be de-
termined, and each new adjustment of that sort
gives the employer an opportunity to shave off the
wages. He can see to it that variations in wages
shall have a downward rather than an upward
tendency. The more serious the girl's home re-
sponsibilities the less able will she be to resist these
small reductions.
Second, as has been indicated, each girl makes
her own labor bargain, and her knowledge of other
girls' earnings in her own shop or elsewhere, de-
pends on chance conversations. Here again the
employer has the advantage over her.
Third, as will be shown later, the shop worker
must reckon always with the home workers' low
earnings, for in the home-work system the manu-
facturer has another chance to push wages down-
ward. " Home workers don't make so much fuss
about the price," said one.
Fourth, different nationalities of the workers
produce different home standards and thus prevent
a demand for a uniform minimum living wage.
Fifth, the busy seasons in this industry are vari-
able; they may begin at any time, according to
the vagaries of fashion. This loss of time means
loss of income. It means also that for several
months each year the number of flower makers in
WAGES AND HOME RESPONSIBILITIES
New York is far in excess of the demand for their
work. Going from shop to shop in search of a job
they then begin to underbid each other.
To list these factors influencing wages is easier
than to measure them, for uncertainty is their
characteristic and therein lies the kernel of the wage
problem in the flower trade. The vital phases of
the conditions of work are subject to forces beyond
the flower maker's control. She has no voice in
their deterirjinaliorujjrhe difficulties in the way
oflmprovement are increased by the fact that at
least half the workers are outside the shops making
flowers at home, and that the conditions of their
employment, to be described in the following
chapter, are such as to be a menace to the stand-
ards of work and wages throughout the industry.
89
CHAPTER V
A GROUP OF HOME WORKERS
MORE than half the trade of flower making in
New York City is carried on in tenement
homes. Of the 1 14 firms investigated only
24 stated that all their manufacturing was done
in the workroom. The remaining 90 reported that
they gave out part of their work to home workers.
The statements of 76 of these firms showed that
they had on their payrolls between 2,200 and 2,400
families who made flowers at home. They had no
records of the number of individual workers repre-
sented in these families, but judging by our inves-
tigation of a group of home workers three in a
family is a low average. Thus, according to the
reports of employers, home workers in this trade in
New York must number about 7,000 and are more
numerous than employes in the shops.*
In spite of the evident importance of home work
in the flower trade no official figures are published
showing its location or its extent. Nor is this
information given for any other industry. Both
* In general it is the process of making which is given out. Starch-
ing, cutting, and dyeing, and the final process of branching can be
more conveniently done in the shops. Forty-six employers stated
that they gave the same grade of work to home workers as was done
inside; forty said that they gave out a cheaper grade; four did not
report on the subject.
90
A GROUP OF HOME WORKERS
the United States census and the New York state
department of labor count only shop employes.
The department of labor, it is true, publishes a
bulletin of the addresses of tenements licensed for
home work, but this bulletin does not give figures
to show the number of home workers living in these
tenements or the different trades in which they are
occupied. The department does, however, possess
a list of the names and addresses of individual
home workers, since the law requires manufac-
turers who give out work to furnish such lists to
factory inspectors on demand. Nevertheless, only
37 flower manufacturers had furnished such lists
to the department in 19 10, and the total number
of names of workers on record was but 47 1 . These
lists we were allowed under certain conditions to
tabulate,* and while as a measure of the home-
work problem the figures they contained were
wholly inadequate, they threw some light upon
the location of factories giving out home work and
the districts in which the out-workers lived, and
confirmed our own observations on these points.
None of these flower shops were north of Four-
teenth Street. Of the 37 shops which had filed their
lists of out-workers, four were on Broadway, two
east of it, and 31 west of it, — all south of Four-
teenth Street. The 31 located on the lower west
* The tabulation was made by special permission of the commis-
sioner of labor on condition that no individual names and addresses
of workers be copied and that the tabulating sheet should be so
planned that the identity of individual firms should be known only
to the secretary of the Committee on Women's Work and one as-
sistant.
91
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
side furnished 391 of the 471 names of home
workers.
Our investigation proved to us that the neigh-
borhood in which home workers in the flower
trade live is on the lower west side of the city in
a section bounded by Christopher Street running
diagonally along the northwest, Canal Street on
the south, the Hudson River on the west, and a
broken line along Sixth Avenue, West Fourth
Street, and West Broadway on the east. This
district adjoins that in which the flower factories
are situated. It is quite natural that the workers
should live near the shops, as they are obliged con-
stantly to carry large boxes of finished flowers
from their homes to the factories, and their earn-
ings are too small to make it worth their while to
lose time and spend carfare in a long journey. The
lists of the labor department showing the neigh-
borhoods in which the 471 out-workers lived in-
dicated substantial agreement with our statement
of boundaries.*
In the neighborhood whose boundaries have
been described we made a detailed investigation
of 1 10 families of home workers. It seemed un-
necessary to increase the number to much more
than a hundred, as this group of households, con-
taining 371 members who worked on flowers, was
*Of the tota4 471, 12 of the addresses were outside Manhattan,
16 in Manhattan above Fourteenth Street, while 409 lived in the
neighborhood bounded on the north by Christopher Street from
Hudson River east to Sixth Avenue, and by Canal Street on the
south. The remaining 34 lived also south of Fourteenth Street but
not within the boundaries sketched.
92
'l
K—i • '
.11
I 1
^M
f ^^^^^__
PIP"11
. &^*^
^
Mk,
A Home Worker Carrying Violets to the Factory in
School Hours
Delivering Flowers Made at Home
A GROUP OF HOME WORKERS
evidently typical of a larger number. They had
been chosen at random, and the information
given about their earnings, their work, and their
homes was in the main uniform enough to indicate
typical rather than exceptional conditions. As an
added proof of their representative character, it
was discovered in the final tabulation that the
flower manufacturers for whom these families
worked numbered 36, or more than a third of the
total number of 90 firms who had reported to our
visitors that they employed home workers.
The facts about these families of flower makers
are significant not only as part of a study of
women's work in this industry, but as a contribu-
tion toward the discussion of the home-work sys-
tem, which prevails not only in the flower trade
but in the manufacture of men's clothing, neck-
wear, millinery, passementerie, underwear, wom-
en's and children's dresses, and a long list of
other occupations. This form of manufacture has
become a most threatening aspect of the sweating
system. In it the labor of young children is util-
ized, and advantage is taken of the urgent need
of their mothers to earn money without leaving
their homes and their children. Pressed by this
need they have become, in the words of an English
report on home work, "cheap and docile" workers.
To the buyer and the general public goods manu-
factured in these crowded tenement homes may
carry disease not recognized as the result of the
home-work system. But even more threatening
93
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
is the effect on the standards of industry, the low-
ering of the prevailing rates of wages paid in the
shops. To discover conditions among home work-
ers in the flower trade is to secure evidence which
should help the community to get rid of the evils
of a system which is undermining the standards
in the most important trades in which women are
employed in New York.
Four large questions are pertinent. Who are
the workers making flowers at home? How much
do they earn? In what type of family are they
found? Is the system good for the workers, the
trade, and the community?
These questions were answered for the flower
trade by interviewing family after family, and
then gathering together in statistical tables the
information which they gave. Perhaps, then, the
clearest way to present the results will be to follow
the method by which they were secured; that is, to
describe a number of families whose circumstances
were representative of the group, and then to fol-
low this description with statistics giving the com-
posite picture of conditions as we found them in
this phase of the industry.
In a tenement on Macdougal Street lives a fam-
ily of seven — grandmother, father, mother, and
four children aged four years, three years, two
years, and one month respectively. All except-
ing the father and the two babies make violets.
The three-year-old girl picks apart the petals; her
sister, aged four years, separates the stems, dip-
94
A GROUP OF HOME WORKERS
ping an end of each into paste spread on a piece
of board on the kitchen table; and the mother
and grandmother slip the petals up the stems.
"We all must work if we want to earn any-
thing," said the mother. They are paid 10 cents
for a gross, 144 flowers, and if they work steadily
from 8 or 9 o'clock in the morning until 7 or 8
at night, they may make 12 gross, $1.20. In the
busy season their combined earnings are usually
I7.00 a week. During five months, from April to
October, they have no work. They live in three
rooms for which they pay $10 a month. The
kitchen, which is used as a workroom, is lighted
only by a window into an adjoining room. The
father is a porter. Both he and his wife were born
in Italy but came to New York when they were
children. The wife when a child, before she was
able to work in a factory, made flowers at home.
Later she worked in a candy factory. "That's
better than making flowers," she said, "but we
can't go out to work after we're married."
Another family of five — mother, father, and three
children — lived in two rooms nearby on Sullivan
Street; rent, $10. The father was a bootblack
earning $3.00 to $4.00 a week. In the previous
month they had paid only half of the rent. The
mother was born in New York, but her parents
were Italian. She had attended a public school
and then found work in a shop where veils were
made. After her marriage she worked at home
making flowers. When visited, she was working
95
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
on yellow muslin roses for which she was paid 25
cents a gross. There were five petals of different
shapes, and each must be put into its right place.
The first one was twisted around the "pep" to
make the bud. Then paste was smeared upon
another petal which was slipped up the wire stem.
Two others were pasted on and then the tube stem
slipped over the wire, and the flower hung on a
line above the kitchen table to dry. With the
help of the mother-in-law, who lived next door,
and a small son aged nine years, who worked after
school, it was possible to make two gross, 288 roses
a day, for which they received 50 cents, or about
$3.00 in a week. During four or five months in
the summer they had no work.
"Making flowers at home is poor work, espe-
cially if you have only a few children to help you/'
was the comment of a worker in a family whose
combined weekly earnings from home work were
never more than $4.00. The father and mother
are Genoese Italians. The children, aged thirteen,
twelve, seven, and five, were all born in New York.
They go to school and all work on flowers after
school hours until as late as 10 o'clock at night.
They make poppies, pasting on two petals, one
silk and one muslin, and inserting the pistil into
the stems which have been branched in the fac-
tory. The price is 6 cents a gross and " if we work
all day and all night too," the mother said, "we
can make 10 gross," 1,440 separate flowers, for
which they receive 60 cents. "The girls in the
96
A GROUP OF HOME WORKERS
shop wouldn't work on such cheap flowers, but they
don't give out the fine roses." The father is a
hod-carrier, earning $3.00 a day, but working usu-
ally less than half the year. They have a woman
boarder who works in a factory. These seven
persons live in three rooms for which the rent is $1 5
a month.
In another tenement nearby is a young married
woman who, working alone at home, can earn the
exceptional wage of from $8.00 to $12 in a week.
She is a skilled brancher and represents the experi- I
enced worker who has learned the trade in the shop,
an unusual type among home workers. She had
made flowers for fifteen years before her marriage.
Her wages from home work usually equal those
of her husband, who is a porter in a saloon. Her
mother-in-law does the housework and takes care
of the eleven-months-old baby, thus leaving the
mother free to work without interruption. The
flowers given her are made abroad and branched
or bunched here. Manufacturers usually do not
give out such work unless they are sure that they
can trust the worker's skill. In a day she can
branch about two gross of the kind upon which
she was engaged at the date of our visit. " But
it's all according to the work," she said. "Some-
times I can make $1 .50 and sometimes $3.00 a day.
You can't count home work by the day, for a day
is really two days sometimes, because people
often work half the night. When the boss asks
me how many flowers I can make in a day I say
97
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
I cannot tell, but I know how many I can do in an
hour. Some girls are so foolish. I've heard them
praising themselves and telling the boss that they
did the work in a day. They're ashamed to say
they worked in the night too. But they only hurt
themselves, for the boss says if they earn that
much in a day he can cut the price/' In the sum-
mer this woman works on feathers, which her
employers give her in order not to lose track of so
skilled a home worker during the dull season of the
flower trade.
For two reasons, this woman thinks the flower
trade a good one. The girls in the shop can make
extra money by taking work home at night, and
they can make flowers at home after they are
married. From a larger point of view, however,
these two reasons might be considered unfortunate
rather than desirable for the worker or the trade.
This woman's story is emphasized because by
contrast it shows the lack of skill and the excess-
ively low earnings in other households. Even in
her case, the variety in earnings should be noted,
and the fact that her skill would command higher
pay per hour in the shop than at home.
In the district known as Greenwich Village is an
Italian family of 10 — father, mother, and eight
children — who, through home work, gain but the
scantiest supplement to their regular combined
earnings of $16.50. These earnings include the
$7.00 a week made by the father selling lunches
in a saloon, $6.50 made by the oldest daughter
A GROUP OF HOME WORKERS
in a box factory, and $3.00 earned by the sixteen-
year-old son as a "wagon boy." Four children
are in school and there are two babies at home.
Every member of the family except the father and
two babies helps to make flowers. The mother
works irregularly during the day, the school chil-
dren after school hours, and the box-maker and
wagon boy in the evening. They make three-
petaled violets at 7 cents a gross, earning a total
weekly wage of $3.00. They live in three rooms
and pay $12.50 a month.
These stories are not chosen because of startling
features but because they give a fair impression
of what our investigators have seen in many other
cases. They show the work of little children; the
prolonged hours of young girls after the day's
labor in the factory; the pressure compelling the
mother to make some contribution to the family
income even when her husband is working; the
irregular hours; the short seasons; the scanty
earnings of a whole group of home workers; the
general level of inefficiency which the system
tends to foster; and the overcrowded homes.
Omitting for the moment any discussion of dark,
dirty bedrooms used as workplaces of flower mak-
ers ill with tuberculosis, of women and children
afflicted with bad cases of skin disease and han-
dling the flowers with no thought of the possi-
bility of infection, we would emphasize rather the
economic conditions represented by the home-
work system, testing it from the point of view of its
99
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
efficiency as an industrial method, the return
which it makes to the Worker for her labor, and
the degree in which it measures up to certain rec-
ognized standards of industry.
First among these standards, recognized in New
York state since its first factory act was passed in
1886, is the prohibition of the labor of little chil-
dren. No child under fourteen may work in a
factory in New York state and none under six-
teen may work without an employment certificate.
Yet when an artificial flower manufacturer gives
out work to be done in a tenement home, the spirit
of the child labor law breaks down, and babies of
three and four years enter the employ of the firm
as part of the family group.
TABLE 20. — AGES OF HOME WORKERS IN FAMILIES
MAKING ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS AT HOME
Age
HOME WORKERS OF THE AGES
SPECIFIED
Number
Per cent
Under 8 years
8 years and under 14 years .
14 years and under 16 years
16 years and over
38
IOI
42
190
10.2
27.2
11. 3
51-3
Total
371
100. 0
Table 20 and the accompanying chart show
the age grouping of the 371 workers who made
flowers at home in the 1 10 households investi-
gated. Of these 371 home workers nearly half,
100
Mi *
Hi
SSHtfiS
m
Jr.
All the Family Work
Flower Making After School
A GROUP OF HOME WORKERS
181, were children under sixteen years of age.
About two in five, 1 39 in all, were under fourteen.
Stated in greater detail, 38 had not yet reached
their eighth birthday, 10 1 were between eight and
fourteen, and 42 between fourteen and sixteen.
Children under 8 —
38 or 10.2%
Adults 16 and
over — 190 or
51.3%
ildren 14 and under
16— 42 or 11.3%
Chart III. — Ages of 371 Home Workers in 1 10 Families
Making Artificial Flowers at Home
Nine of those between fourteen and sixteen, were
at work in factories, where their hours of labor were
limited by law to eight in a day; yet in the evening,
unprotected by law, they made flowers at home.
The youngest child worker was eighteen months
old. He was just learning to pick petals apart to
make them ready to be pasted on the stem. Less
startling, but probably more serious in its effect,
was the labor of the 145 school children who
worked at home in the morning before school
hours and again in the afternoon and evening.
101
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
Questioning the effect of home work upon the
ability of the child to keep up with his class in
school, we made a tabulation of the school grades
and the ages of 122 of these children.*
TABLE 21. — AGES AND GRADES IN NEW YORK PUB-
LIC SCHOOLS OF CHILDREN MAKING ARTI-
FICIAL FLOWERS AT HOME AND
ALSO ATTENDING SCHOOL a
Age
CHILDREN OF EACH SPECIFIED AGE, IN GRADES
I
II
in
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
Total
5
6
7
I
3
6
5
3
7
4
2
5
2
6
3
1
4
6
8
9
9
3
1
3
1 1
10
4
1
3
1
12
11
4
3
4
1
15
12
6
4
5
18
13
5
4
16
14
5
2
5
21
15
2
Total
2
21
19
18
22
18
10
5
115
Number
over-age
7
9
12
•5
9
7
59
a Of the 145 children in the households investigated who were
making artificial flowers and also attending school, two, who were seven
years of age, were still in the kindergarten, five were in special classes
and 23 did not supply information.
* An effort was made to secure directly from the schools the facts
about the grades and ages of these children, but it proved time-
consuming and often impossible, largely because of differences in spell-
ing foreign names. One principal refused the information. Never-
theless, 5 1 of the 122 cases tabulated were verified from school records,
while for the remainder the data are based on the statements of
the children and their parents or brothers and sisters.
102
A GROUP OF HOME WORKERS
More than half the number were above the
normal age for the grades in which they were en-
rolled. This estimate is based on the accepted
standard of age in relation to grade in New York
City schools.* According to this standard the
proportion of over-age children among all the
school children of New York is 30 per cent. That
the corresponding proportion among a group of
children who work at home should be 5 1 per cent
raises important questions as to the effect of home
work on the child. That these children cannot
keep up as they should in their school work is
doubtless due both to the direct effect of work
after school hours and to the indirect influence of
home work in lowering the family standards of
comfort, health, and cleanliness. Absorbed in
work the mother can be neither a vigilant mother
nor a careful housekeeper.
In other ways, too, the home-work system in-
jures children. Work in the crowded, badly ven-
tilated rooms (which we found to be an almost
universal condition among home workers) weak-
ens them physically in two ways, directly by low-
ering their vitality, and indirectly by endan-
* First grade, 6 years and under 8 years
Second grade, 7 years and under 9 years
Third grade, 8 years and under 10 years
Fourth grade, 9 years and under 1 1 years
Fifth grade, 10 years and under 12 years
Sixth grade, 1 1 years and under 13 years
Seventh grade, 12 years and under 14 years
Eighth grade, 13 years and under 15 years
Tenth Annual Report of the city superintendent of schools, New
York, 1908, p. 60.
103
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
gering their health through depriving them of the
opportunity to spend play hours out of doors.
Furthermore, by demanding continuous and mo-
notonous attention, whose motive is not the normal
one of interest but the nervous spur of financial
necessity, this unskilled work in the home is likely
to retard mental development.
The home-work system also offers an escape
from all restriction on the hours of work of young
girls and women. And, gauged by the most im-
portant of all tests, — the wages paid, — the home-
work system in the flower trade does not measure
up even to the prevailing rate of earnings in flower
shops. It cannot even be said that there is a stand-
ard rate of wages for home work, so greatly do
these vary from season to season, from shop to
shop, from household to household.
If you ask an employer to tell you the wages
which he pays to home workers, he will probably
reply, "What they earn. It's all piece work." If
you prevail upon him to show you his payroll, with
its record of weekly payments to one family,
amounting to $3.58, $5.70, $7.20, or even $10, and
ask him how manv workers there were in each
group, he will tell you that he does not know. If
you question the workers as to earnings you will
find it equally difficult to secure exact information.
Several factors enter into these difficulties. First,
flowers change their fashion from season to season.
Not only the style but the material determines
the price. Therefore you cannot record a fixed
104
A GROUP OF HOME WORKERS
rate per gross for violets, or roses, or orchids, or
for any other product of the trade. Second, no
limit is set to the hours of labor, and no two days
are alike in the amount of time spent in making
flowers. Therefore you cannot record the earn-
ings per hour. Furthermore, the group of work-
ers changes. One may work, as she says, "stead-
ily." Another may help for a few hours one day
and none the next. Therefore the earnings per
capita elude investigation. All these difficulties,
of course, emphasize a condition which is character-
istic of the absence of organization or bargaining
power among workers; namely, the lack of a stand-
ard.
Nevertheless, the difficulties can be overcome by
recording the wages or range of earnings usually
received by the family, and by indicating also
the number of workers whose combined effort
is rewarded by such a wage. In Table 22 this plan
was used, and no attempt was made, therefore, to
take account of the hours of labor or the earnings
of individuals.
Thus more than half (65) of the family groups
earned from home work a weekly wage of less than
$5.00; although in 85 of the families there were
two or more home workers. The average weekly
earnings were $4.92.* The tabulation of average
earnings classified according to the number of
workers in each group well illustrates the chaotic
* According to those reports which showed a definite range of pay,
the average of the minimum earnings was $4.62; the average of the
maximum, $5.22.
105
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
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I06
A GROUP OF HOME WORKERS
nature of the system. The earnings seem to have
no consistent relation to the number of workers.
If now we analyze the group of workers, we have
a surprising revelation of the relation of the work
of children to the earning power of the family. In
76 families children under sixteen years of age were
at work. In the remaining 34 families the workers
were all adults. The average weekly earnings of
the families in which children were employed were
$4.72. The average weekly earnings of the fami-
lies in which no children were employed were $5.44.
This was true, notwithstanding the fact that the
average number of adult workers in the families
where child workers were found was 1.8, while
in the families where no children were at work the
average number of adult workers was 1 .6. To draw
definite conclusions of universal application from
these figures is, of course, unwise; but at least they
raise the question, whether the presence of children
does not actually decrease the efficiency of a group
of home workers.
The difference between these family earnings
and the wages of individual shop workers, as they
were described in the preceding chapter, is striking.
The average for the group of shop workers whom
we investigated was $6.72. For the girls in this
group who were sixteen years of age or over, the
average was $7.24. The United States census in
1905 recorded $6.20* as the average weekly earnings
* United States Census. Bulletin 93, Earnings of Wage-Earners,
Manufacturers, p. 98. 1905.
107
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
of women sixteen years of age and over, in fac-
tories manufacturing flowers and feathers. In
April, 1907,* an inspector of the New York state
department of labor who collected wage statistics
in flower shops, by tabulating payrolls in a repre-
sentative group of establishments, reported that
50 per cent of the women received less than $6.80,
while 50 per cent earned more. These statements
were all based on individual earnings, while the
average of $4.92 recorded for our group of home
workers represents combined earnings for an aver-
age group of more than three workers (371 workers
in 1 10 families) half of whom were more than six-
teen years old. These comparisons indicate a scale
of remuneration for home work distinctly lower
than in the shops.
Furthermore, these wages considered with refer-
ence to yearly income are subject to great reduc-
tion because of the long slack season in summer
months. f Over two-thirds of the families (57 of
84 investigated on this point) lost from three to
six months in the year. For these family groups
the average weekly wage distributed throughout
the year would be from 25 to 50 per cent less than
the wage in busy season, or roughly, would range
* New York State Department of Labor, Bulletin No. 33, June,
1907, p. 151.
t The gas bill is another item of reduction of earnings to be con-
sidered. It varies from 25 to 50 cents a week in the busy season
when the family group work until late at night. The greater part
must be charged to home work, for without it economy in light would
be possible. Then, too, it is because of low wages and lack of sys-
tem that the working day is prolonged into the night.
108
A GROUP OF HOME WORKERS
from $2.40 to $3.70.* This amounts approximately
to a yearly income varying from $125 to $190, a
wage which even the most economical would de-
clare to be far less than a living income for one
person, whereas it actually represents the com-
bined earnings of all the home workers in a family.
"No cause can justify a wage that will not subsist
the worker," declares a writer of a report published
by the United States department of labor regard-
ing the work of women and children in Great
Britain. f Gauged by such a standard the home-
work system certainly falls far short of a just wage
scale.
That prices in home work not only vary but
tend downward rather than upward, is a statement
frequently made. Positive evidence could be
secured only by a comparison of present and past
rates duly checked up by facts showing the com-
parative purchasing power of a dollar at the corre-
sponding periods. As no such data are available
the opinions and the experience of workers on this
subject are interesting. Their own words are
quoted for their cumulative value as first hand
testimony.
"Prices are lower than they used to be," said
one woman. "They're about half. I've figured
* The New York State Labor Department in 1902 reported $2.70
as the average wage of home workers in the artificial flower trade al-
lowing for loss of time. New York State Department of Labor,
second annual report, 1902. Vol. I, p. 19.
t United States Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of
Labor, Bulletin No. 80. Woman and Child Wage-earners in Great
Britain, p. 39. Washington, Government Printing Office, 1909.
109
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
it out. I used to make $12 a week. Now I can
only make a dollar a day." One woman who was
pasting stems on leaves for 2 cents a gross said that
the price five years ago for the same work was 5
cents a gross. " Some people take work cheap and
the rest of us are forced to it. Two women came
to our shop the other day and offered to make
flowers at home a week for nothing if the boss
would give them work." " Flowers is cheap work
now," said another. "The boss used to pay much
better. But there's always poorer and poorer
people, and they'll do it for less. They have a lot
of children, and it don't take them long to make a
dollar. So they do it for less than us."
Underlying these opinions are statements of the
causes which influence the wages of home workers.
The remarks of other workers give further testi-
mony on these points. "The price isn't enough,"
said a violet maker who received 6 cents a gross
for violets of three petals, one velvet and two silk.
" But the man can't pay more. If you don't want
to take it he says there's somebody else outside
who will. There are too many peoples waiting for
it." "They couldn't get any girls in the shops
to do such cheap work," said another. "They
couldn't make anything on it — maybe $3.00 a
week. So they give it to us, because we can't go
out to the shops. I t's too cheap work for anybody
but us." "We make nothing on these flowers,"
said a married woman who had been a home worker
when a child. "There ought to be a strike like on
no
A GROUP OF HOME WORKERS
shirtwaists. The other day the boss wanted me to
do some violets, five pieces and reversing them too.
He offered me 1 5 cents a gross. I said I wouldn't
do it for that and then another woman beside me
took them."
That necessity makes weak bargainers is sug-
gestively illustrated by classifying earnings from
home work according to the family income from
other sources. The group of families, 29 in num-
ber, whose weekly income from sources other than
home work was recorded as less than $12, earned
an average of $4.48 a week by making flowers at
home. The 37 households whose income from
other sources amounted to $12 or more averaged
$4.74 from home work. As the families from whom
accurate information on this point could be se-
cured numbered only 66, conclusions are not safe,
but the group considered is at least illustrative.
Apparently the greater the need, the lower the
weekly earnings from home work. The larger the
income from other sources, the larger the home
workers' wages. These figures are not surprising,
if it be true that the better the living conditions,
the greater will be the vitality, efficiency, and bar-
gaining power of the workers. It is in this close
connection between living conditions and bargain-
ing power that we find the reason for regarding
family standards as an essential subject of inquiry
in a study of the home-work system. From this
point of view it would appear that the home worker's
hardships are due, in part at least, to low wages
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
and irregular employment in the occupations in
which other members of her family are employed.
Contrary to the prevailing impression that the
typical home worker is a widow who must support
her family unaided, the statistics of this group
show that in 98 of the no households the father
was living, and that in 87 he contributed to the
family income. In 25 cases the fathers were in
so-called "independent" business, and in 61 other
cases they were wage-earners. In one case the
work was not stated. In four cases they were
temporarily out of work. The weekly earnings of
the 41 men wage-earners from whom definite in-
formation on this point could be secured indicate
how great is the economic pressure which forces
the wife to become a contributor to the family
income even through such unprofitable employ-
ment as the home-work system offers. Of these
4 1 , 32 earned less than $ 1 5 a week, 1 7 falling below
$10. At best then, assuming steady work, three-
fourths of the chief breadwinners of the household
could not earn $800 in a year and nearly half fell
short of $520. When account is taken of the
practically inevitable loss of earnings through ir-
regularity of employment, still further deductions
must be made from these figures. In more than
half the cases reporting on this point, work was
said to be "not steady." The occupations of 86
of these heads of households are shown in the fol-
lowing table.
112
' J , J
' > ,' ' •
Child Toilers Who Work More Regularly than Their Father
Carrying Flowers from Home to Factory
A GROUP OF HOME WORKERS
TABLE 23. — OCCUPATIONS OF FATHERS IN FAMILIES
DOING HOME WORK ON ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS*
Occupation of father
Families in which the
occupation of the
father was as
specified
In independent business
Musician
Barber
Shoemaker
Store keeper, saloon keeper
Coal man, ice man, "newsdealer," "ice
cream man," pushcart man
Bootblacks
I
i
i
2
6
»3
Total
24
Wage-earners
Factory operatives (candy, tailoring, hats,
flowers, feathers, piano strings) .
Porters, elevator men, drivers, watchman,
bartender, lunch men, waiters, patrol-
men, school janitor, ragman, shoemaker
Marble cutter, electrician, mechanics,
plasterer, brass cleaner, plumber, wood-
Laborers (hod carriers, dock yard hands,
etc.)
20
19
12
10
Total . . . . .
Home work on flowers
61
1
Grand total
86
a Of 87 families in which the father was working, one did not state
kind of work.
The father was not the only wage-earner in out-
side occupations. As the boys and girls passed
their fourteenth birthdays they too went out to
work. In these 1 10 households were 700 persons,
"3
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
and of these 226 were wage-earners in occupations
outside the home.*
In only three households were there no outside
wage-earners, and these families could not sup-
port themselves by home work and so were mak-
ing use of other sources of income. One was using
up savings until the children should be old enough
to go out to work. The second was said to have a
record of a profitable connection with crooks. In
the third case the other source of income could
not be ascertained. No family was found which
was entirely supported by earnings from home
work. In 55 households women worked outside
the home. In 6 1 , or nearly three-fifths, two, three,
or even four or more outside wage-earners were
contributing. Counting the home workers, 510
contributed to the support of the family either
through work at home or employment elsewhere.
Of the 190 who contributed nothing 166 were
children.
That home work does not prove to be merely a
temporary expedient is indicated by the length of
time that these family groups have been at work.
The fact that only eight of the 104 families ques-
tioned on this point had worked at home less than
one year contradicts the theory that the home-work
system does not hold its victims very long. Seven-
teen had worked one or two years, an equal num-
ber three or four, 19 five and less than ten years,
* Of no families investigated, two did not supply information
with regard to persons working for wages outside the home.
114
A GROUP OF HOME WORKERS
20 ten years or longer, while 23 could give no
definite answer to the question except "many
years."
Nor are home workers all recently arrived im-
migrants as many suppose. In the artificial
flower trade few home workers are of native-born
parentage, but that many have been long in the
United States is shown by Table 24.
TABLE 24. — LENGTH OF RESIDENCE IN THE UNITED
STATES OF FOREIGN-BORN PARENTS IN FAM-
ILIES MAKING ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS AT HOME a
Years in the United States
FAMILIES IN WHICH THE PAR-
ENTS HAD BEEN IN THE
UNITED STATES THE SPECI-
FIED NUMBER OF YEARS
Father
Mother
Under 5 years ....
5 years and under 10 .
10 years and under 15 .
1 5 years and under 20 .
20 years or longer ....
5
7
15
12
48
8
12
14
15
47
Total
87
96
a Among the 1 10 families investigated 12 reported the father as
dead, four reported the father as native born and 10 reported the
mother as native born, seven reported the father as foreign born but
did not specify length of residence, and four reported the mother as
foreign born but did not specify length of residence.
In only five families had the father been in this
country less than five years, while in 75 he had
been here ten to twenty years or longer, and in
four he was native born.
The fact that the great majority were Italians
115
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
was doubtless chiefly due to the attitude of
Italians toward women and their prejudice against
their employment outside the home. " I talians are
different from Americans,,, said one home worker.
"They don't like to work out in factories, and the
men don't want them to do it. They must take
the work home, especially if they are married. "
Of no households investigated the father was
Italian born in 105 and the mother in 98. Four of
the fathers and 10 of the mothers were born in this
country but in all these cases the previous gene-
ration came from Italy. In one family the father
was Austrian, in one the mother was Hungarian,
in another Austrian. The home-work system in
the flower trade must be regarded not as an iso-
lated phase of the industry but as an indication
of economic pressure in the families of Italians.
It is indeed the increasing necessity that the wives
of wage-earning men should become wage-earners
which is fostering the growth of the home-work
system. In 99, or 10 out of 1 1 of the households
visited, the mother was a home worker, some-
times alone and sometimes with other members
of the family. I n only nine, or about eight per cent
of the cases, had she been a flower maker before
her marriage, — a fact indicating that she turned to
this work not because she knew how to do it but be-
cause under the present order of industry it seemed
to be her only resource. We are accustomed to
believe that in the manufacturing industries of
America few married women are at work, and that
116
A GROUP OF HOJyiE WORKERS
we have escaped the problems which their em-
ployment has brought to other countries. Yet
the predominance of unmarried women in the
factories does not prove that married women are
not obliged to work. Rather it indicates that
factory work with its long hours is impossible for
mothers of little children. Studies of the stand-
ards of living* have shown how many wives of
wage-earners, not among Italians only but among
all nationalities, are seeking employment not in
factories but in home work, in office cleaning, in
day's labor, — occupations whose one merit is a
certain freedom in hours which enables the mother
to be at home sometime during the day, while her
freedom in this respect is penalized by the wholly
inadequate remuneration offered her. The false
impression that we have escaped the problem
of married women's employment has arisen mere-
ly because the organized industries which are
counted by the census offer opportunities so ill
adapted to the duties of housewives and mothers.
This lack of opportunity, combined with economic
pressure on women to supplement their hus-
bands' earnings, is the two-fold cause of the
growth of the home-work system with its break-
ing down of family life and industrial stand-
ards. Under these conditions it will continue to
thrive unless the community can be roused to
effective action.
* Cf. Chapin, Robert Coit; Standards of Living among Working-
men's Families in New York. Russell Sage Foundation Publication.
New York, Charities Publication Committee, 1909.
117
CHAPTER VI
THE FLOWER TRADE AND THE LAW
ARTIFICIAL flower making is one of the
200 or more manufacturing pursuits in-
cluded within the scope of the factory laws
of New York state. The hours of labor of women
and children and sanitary conditions in the work-
shops are restricted by legislative enactment
which applies to all factories throughout the state.
In addition, the labor laws affect the artificial
flower trade through a series of somewhat elaborate
provisions regarding manufacture in tenements.
Apparently, therefore, artificial flower makers
should be well protected. The industry, never-
theless, illustrates some serious shortcomings in
the effort so far made to safeguard the health of
working women and children.
Thorough inspection of sanitary conditions in
workrooms was not attempted in this investiga-
tion. It is a field which needs the attention of
experts in sanitation, and it seemed desirable for
our visitors to confine their attention to trade
conditions, hours, wages, seasons, and workroom
organization rather than to building construction,
ventilation, or protection against fire risks. Nev-
ertheless, certain facts about workroom surround-
118
THE FLOWER TRADE AND THE LAW
ings should precede a discussion of the hours of
labor.
Two types of workroom stand out prominently:
the loft in a tall Broadway factory building, and
the single floor of a remodeled dwelling house on
the lower west side of Manhattan. Few firms
occupy an entire building. The majority rent
lofts in factories jointly occupied by a half dozen
or more manufacturers in various industries. For
flower making does not take much space, and the
majority of firms in this industry have a compara-
tively small force in the workroom.*
The best lighted space is almost invariably given
not to the workroom but to the show room for the
display of flowers. In the Broadway loft the
typical plan is a long narrow room with windows
at front and extreme rear, leaving the middle space
badly lighted and not adequately ventilated. The
front windows usually light the show room and the
firm's private office, and a tall partition, used to
shut off the workroom, serves to obstruct the
light and air which might otherwise reach the
workers.
This sometimes makes necessary the use of
artificial light. A lighted gas jet unprotected by
any globe or wire guard, placed just above a work
table dangerously near the cord on which the
workers hang the finished and highly inflammable
* Of the 1 14 firms investigated 44 employed less than 25 women, 27
had a force of 25 to 50, 16 had 50 to 75, 10 had 75 to 100, 13 had 100
to 200, one employed 200, and one had 300 women workers. Two
did not report.
119
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
flowers, is a not uncommon sight. Gas is also
used in connection with the process of goffering,
and in flower shops which have feather depart-
ments it is necessary in steaming the feathers.
The finished flowers, packed in boxes piled high
in the workrooms, are also so inflammable that
the fire risk is very grave.
That the larger firms are the ones able to occupy
a Broadway location has already been pointed
out. About one-third of all the flower shops in-
vestigated were located in former dwelling houses
planned for different purposes and not satisfactory
when used as workrooms. A few were well-
lighted and ventilated, much better indeed than
the long, narrow Broadway loft; but in many, light
was not well distributed throughout the rooms,
heating and ventilation were defective, and the
wooden floors and stairways were covered with dust.
Only the fine old doors with beautifully curved arch
of glass above, serve to remind visitors of the high
estate from which the house has fallen since the days
when it stood proudly in the residence district of
the lower West Side. Now it has become a make-
shift factory into which as many workers as pos-
sible are crowded in the busy season.
Unfortunately the New York labor law does
not establish any definite standard of air tests
or lighting. Ventilation must be "proper and
sufficient,,, says the statute, and there must be at
least 250 cubic feet of air space for each employe.
Nothing is said about testing the quality of the
120
«-*"
^
A Former Dwelling House containing Two Factories
Feather Makers
THE FLOWER TRADE AND THE LAW
air, nor is any requirement made about lighting.
These provisions leave much to the discretion of
the inspector, and are not specific enough to pre-
vent the use of buildings not well adapted to
factory purposes, nor does either the factory or the
building code make definite requirements regard-
ing ventilation and light in the construction of new
buildings. This failure to establish a rigid stand-
ard of sanitation in buildings to be used for factory
purposes is a lost opportunity in New York, for
even the most casual glance shows how active
building operations are at this time. Some years
from now, when public sentiment may have grown
powerful enough to demand wholesome conditions
in factories, a great obstacle to effective action will
be the number of buildings constructed in 1910 or
19 12 without careful planning to give light and air.*
More definite than these discretionary powers
are the provisions regarding the hours of work of
women and children. In the spring of 1912, a bill
limiting women's work to fifty-four hours a week f
was passed in New York, to take effect in the
autumn. At the time of this investigation of
* On the subject of ventilation, the Commissioner of Labor wrote
as follows in his report submitted to the legislature in February,
1912: "The legislature of 191 1 failed to enact legislation fixing a
standard of ventilation. This being the case, we have only under-
taken in extreme cases to compel factory proprietors to provide means
of ventilation and to maintain satisfactory air conditions in work-
rooms." Report of the Commissioner of Labor, New York State,
191 1, p. 22.
t The following letter was sent to members of the committee on
labor and industries of the legislature while this bill was pending.
It was the result of a unanimous vote of an Italian girls' club, and
was written by a committee appointed by the club after a discussion
121
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
flower shops, however, the law prohibited the em-
ployment of women of sixteen years or over longer
than sixty hours in a week. It prohibited work
by women under the age of twenty-one between
the hours of 9 o'clock at night and 6 o'clock in the
morning, thus assuring a rest period at night. It
limited the working day to ten hours, but by vari-
ous " exception" clauses it permitted these ten
hours to become twelve as a regular practice not
more than five days in the week or as occasional
of factory laws in New York state. Only the signature and some
of the spelling have been changed. Otherwise it stands as it was
written by the girls themselves without other aid.
ITALIAN GIRLS' INDUSTRIAL LEAGUE
28 Macdougal Street.
New York, March 7th, 1912.
To Whom it May Concern:
We, the members of the Italian Girls' Industrial League, have
come to the conclusion that the girls of this state are working too
many hours a week and we think that the 54 hour bill ought to hjl
passed and not only passed but inforced. Now in our clubwe rep^B
sent all different lines of industry. We have the flowe^Hjj^^ •
have the hair trade, the embroiderers, the book binders^H Mj*
makers, childrens' dresses, shirt waist makers, dress mak^JP&les
ladies, candy makers & a good many other trades & also a brush maker.
We also know of girls that work in candy factories that go to work
at 7 in the morning and work through until seven in the evening,
with only Y^ hour for lunch & only get 7 cents for the extra hour &
in the flowers the girls have to work so hard & when they are busy
they have to work overtime & also take work home. They do not
care whether a girl is sick or not, she has to work, but when they are
slack they do not care whether a girl needs work or not, she is laid off.
We could tell you so much of other trades but it would take up too
much space. We think it would be a very good idea if some of you
gentlemen would go & visit some of the different factories and see
for their selves, & I do not think they would be very long in passing
that bill. We do also want to speak about the canneries up state.
We think it an outrage that those people have to work such long
hours not only for the girls and women but for those innocent little
children who have to work so hard when they ought to be at play,
from Mrs. Maria Gonzaga, President.
122
THE FLOWER TRADE AND THE LAW
overtime not more than three days. The new law
limits the week to fifty-four hours, and the day to
nine, with exceptions permitting a maximum of ten
hours.* By an amendment f passed March, 191 3,
legal provision was made for a rest period between
10 p. m. and 6 a. m. for women employed in fac-
tories. Women under twenty-one must still stop
work at 9 p. m. Children under sixteen cannot
legally be employed in factories before 8 in the
morning or after 5 in the afternoon, or more than
eight hours in any one day.
In the discussion of the application of this law
to any trade it is necessary to distinguish between
the normal schedule of hours and the length of the
working day when it is prolonged by overtime in
the busy season. Table 25 shows the total daily
hours of work in flower shops when the normal
^hedule prevails.
kv faj^he largest group of shops, — 79, or about
sfl| Rvery 10, — employing 3,581 women, or
71 I^PKnt of the total normal force, had a work-
ing day of nine to nine and one-half hours. Only
about one woman in 1 1, 470 in all, worked in a
shop whose day was eight hours or less. None
were found whose normal schedule exceeded the
legal limit of ten hours daily, but 100 women, 2
per cent, worked nine and one-half to ten hours.
It should be remembered that in measuring the
* For opinion of the Supreme Court of New York as to the validity
of this law, see Appendix B of this volume.
f For text of new law, see Appendix D of this volume.
123
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
TABLE 25. — DAILY HOURS OF WORK, WHEN NOT
WORKING OVERTIME, OF WOMEN EMPLOYED
IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWER SHOPSa
Daily hours of work
Shops in
which
hours of
work
were as
specified
WOMEN EMPLOYED
IN SHOPS IN
WHICH HOURS Of
WORK WERE AS
SPECIFIED
Number
Per
cent
8 hours or less
More than 8 hours, less than 83^ hrs.
83^ hours and less than 9 hours .
9 hours and less than 9^ hours .
9H hours and less than 10 hours
6
3
21
79
3
470
80
782
3,58i
100
9
2
16
7>
2
Total
1 12
5,013
100
a Of 1 14 firms investigated, two did not supply information. This
table shows the hours in effect on regular working days, not on Satur-
days.
TABLE 26. — HOURS AT WHICH WOMEN EMPLOYED
IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWER SHOPS BEGAN WORK8
Hour of beginning work
Shops in
which work
began at
time
specified
WOMEN EMPLOYED IN
SHOPS IN WHICH
WORK BEGAN AT
TIME SPECIFIED b
Number
Per cent
745 a. m
8 a. m. and before 8 30 a. m.
8:30 a. m. and before 9 a. m.
1
96
15
60
4,059
884
1
81
18
Total
1 12
5,003
100
a Of 1 14 firms investigated, two did not supply information.
bOf the 96 shops beginning work from 8 to 8:30 a. m. one did not
report number of women employed.
124
THE FLOWER TRADE AND THE LAW
length of the working day the time allowed for
meals is deducted, so that the period between the
time of beginning work and the time of ending —
the whole period when the worker is really re-
sponsible to the shop — is longer than the state-
ment of daily hours indicates.
Between 8 a. m. and 8:30 a. m. was the opening
time for 96 shops, employing 4,059, 81 per cent
of the women workers. Only one shop opened
earlier, while 15 began the day at 8:30 a. m. or
later.
TABLE 27. — HOURS AT WHICH WOMEN EMPLOYED
IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWER SHOPS LEFT WORK
WHEN NOT WORKING OVERTIME a
Hour of leaving work
Shops in
which work
ended at
time
specified
WOMEN EMPLOYED IN
SHOPS IN WHICH
WORK ENDED AT TIME
SPECIFIED**
Number
Per cent
5 p. m. and before 5 130 p. m.
5 130 p. m. and before 6 p. m.
6 p. m
54
56
20
2,664
2,304
1
53
46
Total
1 1 1
4,988
100
» Of 114 firms investigated, three did not supply information.
This table shows the hours of closing on regular working days, not
on Saturdays.
bOf the 56 shops in which the hour of leaving work is 6 p. m.,
one did not report number of women employed.
Slightly more than half (53 per cent) of the
women, or 2,664, worked until sometime between
5:30 p. m. and 6 p. m., while 2,304, 46 per cent,
125
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
worked until exactly 6 o'clock. Only one shop
closed before 5:30 p. m. Between the time of
beginning and ending work only one rest period
was allowed — the noon recess.
TABLE 28. — LENGTH OF NOON RECESS OF WOMEN
EMPLOYED IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWER SHOPS a
Length of noon recess
Shops in
which noon
recess was
as specified
WOMEN EMPLOYED IN
SHOPS IN WHICH
NOON RECESS WAS
AS SPECIFIED b
Number
Per cent
Thirty minutes ....
Forty-five minutes and less than
sixty
Sixty minutes ....
39
9
63
2,083
563
2,342
42
11
47
Total
1 1 1
4,988
100
aOf 1 14 firms investigated, three did not supply information.
bOf the 39 shops in which the noon recess was thirty minutes,
one did not report number of women employed.
In 39 shops, employing more than 2,000 wom-
en, the noon recess was only half an hour long.
The law provides for a one-hour lunch period but
unfortunately allows this time to be shortened by
special permit from the labor department. A
large number of factories in all industries secure
this permit. That 63 flower shops, employing
2,342 women, 47 per cent, gave an hour at noon
is, therefore, rather surprising. The probable ex-
planation of allowing this full hour in so many
flower factories is that these are the shops nearest
to the homes of the workers, and the location
126
1
THE FLOWER TRADE AND THE LAW
enables the girls to go home for lunch. If they
were obliged to eat lunch in the workroom they
would probably prefer a shorter recess and an
earlier closing hour at night. This tendency on
the part of employers and workers to cut down
the noon rest period is a dangerous one for the
workers' health.
Many establishments have a slightly earlier
closing hour on Saturday, so that the length of
the working week is not always six times the
working day. Thus, one more table is necessary
to show the weekly hours of labor of flower makers.
TABLE 29. — WEEKLY HOURS OF WORK, WHEN NOT
WORKING OVERTIME, OF WOMEN EMPLOYED
IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWER SHOPS a
Weekly hours of work
Shops in
which
weekly
hours were
as specified
WOMEN EMPLOYED IN
SHOPS IN WHICH
WEEKLY HOURSWERE
AS SPECIFIED
Number
Per cent
48 hours or less .
Over 48 hours and less than 50
50 hours and less than 52 .
52 hours and less than 54 .
54 hours ....
Over 54 hours and less than 56
56 hours and less than 58 .
7
2
17
57
14
3
5
552
40
633
2,625
357
440
150
12
1
•3
55
7
9
3
Total
105
4.797
100
aOf 114 firms investigated, nine did not supply information.
In 57 shops, 2,625 women, 55 per cent, worked
fifty-two to fifty-four hours in a week. This
127
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
group represents the majority. Twenty-two shops
worked longer, while 26 had a shorter week. The
shops working longer than fifty-four hours were the
ones affected directly by the fifty-four-hour law.
None, however, worked regularly the sixty hours
permitted by the law in force at the time of this
investigation, so that it was possible for all em-
ployers to lengthen the normal hours of work
more or less in busy season without exceeding the
limit of the law. Thus there are two kinds of
overtime, legal and illegal.
To secure accurate information about overtime,
especially when it exceeds the legal limit, is not
so easy as to ascertain the normal working day.
Employers are not willing to make full confession
of violating the law, and employes fear that if
they give this sort of information they may be
found out and discharged. The cases of which we
have record must be regarded, therefore, as illus-
trative rather than a measure of the extent of over-
time. Nevertheless, employers in as many as 72
of the shops investigated reported that they were
accustomed to prolong the workday at certain
seasons, — although not in all cases to an illegal
excess, — while only 40 stated that they never had
any overtime. Two did not report.
In interviewing employes, card records were
made not only of the girl's trade history but of the
details of her report of shops in which she had
been employed, and whose conditions she could
remember most accurately. A tabulation of 47 of
128
THE FLOWER TRADE AND THE LAW
these reports made by girls who had actually
worked overtime gives an indication of violations
of the law in this trade. If the numbers seem
small it should not be forgotten that each report
represents not one worker only but others em-
ployed under the same conditions in the same
shop. Four reported that they had worked be-
tween ten and eleven hours in a day; 21 had
worked between eleven and twelve hours; and 12
had worked exactly twelve hours, exclusive of
time allowed for lunch and supper. Three had
worked more than twelve hours in a day. Seven
others reported overtime, but the time of stopping
work was so irregular that no definite statement
of the length of the workday could be secured.
It was entirely possible to keep within the legal
daily limit of twelve hours and still have not only
a very long day but an excessively long week.
For example, one flower maker, seventeen years
old, reported that normally she worked from 8
a. m. until 5 130 p. m. with a half hour at noon,
and on Saturday stopped at 5 p. m. — nine hours
daily except Saturday and fifty-three and one-half
hours weekly. But when working overtime she
stayed four nights a week until 8:30 with no time
allowed for supper, thus working twelve hours a
day and sixty-five and one-half hours a week. To
have no time for supper was a violation of the law
which requires that in cases where employes are to
work overtime more than an hour after 6 p. m., at
least twenty minutes' recess must be allowed be-
129
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
fore beginning overtime work. Furthermore, this
case was a violation of the somewhat intricate pro-
vision by which " irregular" or occasional over-
time must not exceed a ten-hour day more than
three days in the week.* Clearly, however, the
long twelve-hour day was possible under the law.
Enforcement was made difficult by the fact that a
violation is not proved unless it can be clearly
shown that the excess over ten hours occurred on
more than three days in the week, and unless the
total for the week exceeds sixty hours as it did
in this case. This girl's report is an illustration
of the intricacies f of proving a violation. It also
shows the way in which the working week may be
prolonged unduly without exceeding the daily
limit on any one day.
Because of these complications 1 5 of the 47 re-
ports of overtime did not contain all the necessary
facts as to time of beginning and ending work each
day, change in Saturday hours, time allowed for
lunch and supper each day, and number of days
when overtime was worked, to make possible an
accurate count of the total working week. Of
the 32 records supplying all these facts, however,
20 showed a violation of the sixty-hour law. Of
these, eight were reports of more than sixty but
less than sixty-five hours, 1 1 recorded sixty-five
* See page 122.
t The intricacies were not removed when the fifty-four-hour law
was passed, although for the former sixty we must now read fifty-four,
for a ten-hour day substitute nine, and for the maximum twelve
read ten.
130
Inflammable Material is Hung Near Unguarded Gas Jets
1
* j
f
J s
1
An Attic Workroom
THE FLOWER TRADE AND THE LAW
to seventy hours, and one a seventy-two-hour
week. The remaining 12 showed overtime above
the regular schedule, varying from less than fifty-
two to sixty hours, but not exceeding what was
then the legal limit. These reports represented 24
shops, of which 17 exceeded the sixty-hour limit.
It may seem at first glance that long hours of
work are not serious in such a trade. No heavy
work is done by women in flower shops. The
materials which they handle are light, and tools
held in the hand take the place of the nerve-rack-
ing electric power machines of other industries.
Yet elements of fatigue are by no means lacking.
The flower maker sits at her work all day. Physi-
cians say that to sit continuously may be as injuri-
ous as to stand continuously. It has been noted
that many of the workrooms are poorly ventilated,
and that the air is further vitiated by gas stoves
used for heating the tools and sometimes by gas
used for illumination. Frequently the dyeing is
done in a corner of the same room in which the
girls work and the odor of the wood alcohol is un-
pleasant and even, as many believe, positively
injurious. Some girls complain that the hard
wire and the heated iron tools tire the fingers and
make the hands callous, and others that the
colored flowers strain their eyes. More serious is
the complaint that certain dyes are poisonous.*
* This opinion was expressed so frequently by workers that it seems
credible, although no medical examinations have been made to sup-
port it. The girls say that they inhale the dust from cheap flowers,
and that the color frequently stains their hands and may inadvertently
131
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
Although there are no machines to speed-up the
workers, the forewoman aided by the piece-work
system frequently takes their place.
" It's an awful grind," said one woman of thirty
years' experience in flower shops. "They'd like
to take the blood out of you. Work! Work!
Work!" The new scientific studies of the physi-
ology of fatigue prove that physical exhaustion
results not alone from heavy work which strains
the muscles, but quite as surely from long-con-
tinued attention directed to one task.* A twelve-
hour day means exhaustion for the flower maker,
with as much danger from the now demonstrated
poisonous character of the "toxin of fatigue" as
would result from prolonged hours in any other
occupation.
Employment more than sixty hours a week was
not the only violation of the law reported by
workers. Table 30 shows other infringements of
the regulations designed to protect working women
and children.
These reports, again, must be regarded merely
as illustrative and not in any sense a measure of
the extent of the violations there listed. Never-
theless, if interviews with less than 200 workers
revealed 123 distinct cases of disregard of the law,
be rubbed on the mouth or eyes. They dread especially the red color
known as Flying Jack, and say that their saliva is red when they have
been working on roses of that shade. A special investigation of the
physical effects of these dyes ought to be made.
* Goldmark, Josephine: Fatigue and Efficiency. Russell Sage
Foundation Publication. New York, Charities Publication Com-
mittee, 1912.
132
THE FLOWER TRADE AND THE LAW
it would seem that if a thorough investigation of
5,000 flower makers were possible the violations
TABLE 30. — VIOLATIONS IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWER
ESTABLISHMENTS OF LAWS RESTRICTING THE
EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN a
Nature of violation
Violations
of each
specified
nature
Children
Children under 14 employed
Children under 16 employed without working
papers
Children under 16 employed more than 8 hours
daily
Children under 16 employed more than 48 hours
weekly
Women
Women under 2 1 employed after 9 p. m. .
Women employed more than 12 hours daily
Women employed more than 60 hours weekly .
Women allowed less than 20 minutes for supper
when working overtime more than one hour
after 6 p. m.
Women employed more than 10 hours daily irreg-
ularly more than 3 times a week
Women employed on Sunday work (with no other
day of rest allowed in the week)
Home work
Work taken home by shop workers living in un-
licensed tenements
5
7
14
*3
2
3
20
23
18
1
>7
Total
123
aAs reported by workers who had experienced the violations.
discovered would be multiplied to an alarming
degree. The tendency to overtime becomes the
133
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
more serious when we realize that home work
given to shop employes after their day's work in
the shop offers an escape from factory laws, and is
often a substitute for overtime in the factory.
This home work is really overtime, although in
the discussion of hours of work in the shop it has
not been so counted. The last violation named
in the table, the giving out of work to employes
who live in unlicensed houses, is due to this
method of prolonging the day's labor. It nulli-
fies factory laws and renders the task of protecting
the health of women and girls wellnigh hopelessly
baffling. For instance, one girl who reported "no
overtime" in her shop, nevertheless told the in-
vestigator that excessive night work had "broken
her down." She had been sick for several months,
and the illness had left her weak and anaemic.
She and her sister had worked at home until i
or 2 o'clock in the morning making flowers brought
from the shop after the day's work.
Of the employers interviewed, 86, or three-
fourths, stated that they gave work to their em-
ployes to take home at night. Five gave no in-
formation on this point. Only 23, about one in
five, reported no home work for shop employes.
Of these 23, 17 said that instead of home work
they had overtime in the shop, while only six, 5
per cent of the total number investigated, re-
ported no overtime and no home work. Nearly
half, 52, reported both overtime in the shop and
home work for shop employes, while 34 said that
134
THE FLOWER TRADE AND THE LAW
the work at home was a substitute for overtime in
the factory.
Contrary to the facts about typical home
workers' families, who work at home only and not
in the shop, home work after factory hours is by
no means confined to Italians but is quite as com-
mon among other nationalities. The reasons for
the system are not difficult to discover. The
workers' motives may be read in an examination
of the statistics of low wages, combined with the
statistics of short seasons of employment. The
employer is equally willing to give out the work,
especially to shop employes whose efficiency he
knows, for it saves him the expense of lighting his
factory and the trouble of staying there himself
to supervise the work, and it frees him from the
more or less remote danger of prosecution for il-
legal overtime.
The writer visited an artificial flower shop ex-
actly at 5 o'clock one afternoon. The employer
said that only one girl in the workroom was under
sixteen. He pointed her out as she was putting
on her hat to go home. He was especially strict
on this point, as a factory inspector had recently
visited his establishment and instructed him to
send children home at 5 o'clock. The next day
one of our visitors went to the home of a flower
maker, chosen quite at random from a long list. It
proved to be the home of the girl who had left the
shop so promptly at 5 p. m. Her mother cor-
roborated the statement that she never worked
135
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
overtime in the factory. Instead of that, she
said, she brought work home at night and worked
until 10 p. m. There is danger, indeed, that the
more strict the regulation of hours within the
factory, the greater will be the tendency to have
the work done at home.
All roads in the flower trade lead to the home-
work system. The home workers in their eager
competition for work are constantly influencing
the wage scale, constantly shortening the seasons
by swelling the volume of production to meet im-
mediate market demands, and constantly afford-
ing a means of lengthening the hours of work for
shop workers as well as home workers. Home
work may even prolong the hours of work within
the factory in such processes as branching and
packing, which cannot conveniently be done at
home but are the final processes even on flowers
"made" in tenements. Until the home-work
system is dealt with, New York state will
never succeed in restricting the hours of work
of artificial flower makers even to sixty in a
week.
So far, the efforts of New York state to deal
with the home-work system not only in the flower
trade but also in the manufacture of some 40
other articles of commerce have not met with any
marked success. The fear of contagion is the
basis of the present attempted regulation of the
system. The provisions of this effort to protect
the public health are contained in the section of
136
THE FLOWER TRADE AND THE LAW
the factory law entitled "Tenement-made Arti-
cles. " In this law 41 products,* including arti-
ficial flowers, are named, and none of them may
be manufactured in a tenement which has not
been licensed by the department of labor. This
license is the essential provision of the law. The
other sections describe the method of granting or
revoking it. Before a license is granted applica-
tion for it must be made to the commissioner of
labor by the owner of the house. In New York
City it is the duty of the labor department to
consult the records of the local board of health
and the tenement house department to make sure
that no orders from those departments are out-
standing against the property. An inspector of
the labor department must then be sent to in-
vestigate the premises. The license may be
granted if this inspection and the search of the
records of other departments prove that "such
building is free from infectious, contagious, or
communicable disease, that there are no defects
of plumbing that will permit the free entrance of
sewer air, that such building is in a clean and proper
sanitary condition, and that the articles specified
in this section may be manufactured therein
* "Coats, vests, knee-pants, trousers, overalls, cloaks, hats, caps,
suspenders, jerseys, blouses, dresses, waists, waistbands, underwear,
neckwear, furs, fur trimmings, fur garments, skirts, shirts, aprons,
purses, pocketbooks, slippers, paper boxes, paper bags, feathers,
artificial flowers, cigarettes, cigars, umbrellas, or articles of rubber,
. . . macaroni, spaghetti, ice cream, ices, candy, confectionery, nuts
or preserves."
Text of law, New York State Department of Labor, Annual Report
of Commissioner of Labor, 191 1, p. 214.
137
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
under clean and healthful conditions." * If these
conditions be not maintained the commissioner of
labor has power to revoke the license.
It is obvious that this law has no relation to the
real drawbacks of the home-work system as they
have been described in the preceding chapter: the
encouragement of child labor, long hours of work
for women, and a prolonged working day for young
girls employed in the shops. Yet these are in-
dustrial conditions which the legislature has seen
fit to regulate everywhere throughout the state
except when the factory is in a tenement home.
The provisions of law regarding "tenement-made
articles" are practically useless to the workers.
Nor can it be said that the law achieves its
main purpose of protecting the health of the con-
sumer. A convincing statement on this point is
a tabulation of the number of persons per room
in the households of home workers in the artificial
flower trade. (See Table 31.)
More than half, 59, of the families investigated
lived in such crowded quarters that counting
kitchens and each tiny bedroom they averaged
two or more occupants per room. The flowers on
which members of the family have been working
are kept over night in these crowded rooms, each
of which becomes a bedroom for two or more
persons. Yet only six of the houses visited in
this investigation were unlicensed. The number
* See text of law, New York State Department of Labor, Annual
Report of Commissioner of Labor, 191 1, pp. 214-219.
138
THE FLOWER TRADE AND THE LAW
of persons per room, the habits of the family,
their cleanliness, or the reverse, are not important
factors in securing a license if the building be
moderately sanitary. It is true that the law re-
quires that the state of the building be such that
articles "may be manufactured therein under clean
and healthful conditions," but the standard of
cleanliness is not defined, and the observance of
such a standard in rooms which are used both as
factory and living quarters could hardly be en-
forced even if an army of inspectors were assigned
to the task.
TABLE 31. — PERSONS PER ROOM IN FAMILIES MAK-
ING ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS AT HOMEa
Persons per room
Families in which the
number of persons
per room was as
specified
Less than one person
One person and less than two persons .
Two persons and less than three persons
Three persons and less than four persons
Four persons
3
46
1
2
Total
108
aOf no families investigated, two did not supply information.
These difficulties are frankly stated in the report
of the commissioner of labor of New York for
the year 191 1:
"It would be idle for us to contend that our supervision
over manufacturing in tenement houses is up to the standard
contemplated in the statute. It never has been and never
139
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
will be unless a small army of inspectors is provided for and
kept constantly at work. Our inspectors are only in these
apartments for a few minutes once or twice a year at most,
and it would be folly to assume that we are able under such
circumstances to observe all that should be known concerning
this phase of our industrial life. That conditions are im-
proving will be admitted by the strongest opponents of 'home
work' in tenement houses, but that they are far from ideal
is also well known and understood by all who have given the
subject any real attention." *
An inspection "for a few minutes once or twice
a year at most" is obviously insufficient to pre-
vent work being done by tenants whose standards
of cleanliness are menacingly low even though
they live in licensed houses; nor can such brief
and infrequent inspection give any assurance to
buyers that the articles which they buy have not
been manufactured by home workers ill with
tuberculosis, or tonsilitis, or "sore eyes," or skin
disease. Striking evidence of the failure of the
licensing system is given in a report on the men's
ready-made clothing trade, in one of the 19 vol-
umes containing the results of the special federal
investigation of woman and child wage-earners in
the United States. The investigators' conclusion
is thus summarized : f
"It has been proved impossible, in spite of all existing laws
merely regulating tenement-house manufacture, either in the
* New York State Department of Labor, Annual Report of Com-
missioner of Labor, 191 1, p. 21.
t Report on Woman and Child Wage-earners in the United States.
Volume II, Men's Ready-made Clothing, p. 317. U. S. Senate
Document No. 645.
140
THE FLOWER TRADE AND THE LAW
United States of America or elsewhere, to guarantee to the
consumer that clothing made or finished in homes is free from
disease and vermin. All laws 'regulating* tenement-house
manufacture are more or less ineffective in the accomplish-
ment of the principal purpose for which they have been en-
acted, namely, the preservation of the public health. The
New York state laws on this subject are looked upon as
models for this class of legislation, and every effort is made
for their enforcement, yet it has been found in this investiga-
tion that work was being done in homes in the city of New
York that, while structurally sanitary, were insanitary from
other standpoints, owing to the presence of filth or vermin,
or of diseased persons, or that they had become insanitary
because of the low standards of the dwellers in them/'
Not only has the system of regulation failed to
afford any real protection to the consumer, but
it has not even proved a check on the spread of the
system. The number of licensed tenements in
Greater New York in 1906 was 5,261. By 19 10 the
number was 1 3,000. At the rate of 2,000 a year,
owners of tenements not hitherto licensed in New
York City have been applying for the privilege,
and at the same rate the task of inspection
has been growing rapidly more burdensome. Yet
with all the expenditure of effort thus demanded of
the department of labor, experience has proved that
the inspection of sanitary conditions in the homes
of workers has not only failed to check the spread
of home work, but also that it has not affected the
standards of any industry by any such measure
of protection of women or children as is afforded
by even the least effective of factory laws.
141
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
Recognizing that the regulation of sanitary con-
ditions is not an effective method of attack on the
real evils of tenement manufacture, sociologists and
statesmen both in this country and abroad are
seeking a better solution. For example, England
is trying a scheme new to English labor laws ; name-
ly, the establishment of minimum wage boards.
This is in accord with the principle laid down by
the select committee on home work in 1908.
"In the opinion of your Committee," they wrote, "the
second proposal — for the establishment of Wages Boards —
goes to the root of the matter, in so far as the object aimed
at is an increase in the wages of Home Workers. No pro-
posals which fail to increase the income of these people can
have any appreciable effect in ameliorating their condition." *
The same point of view was manifest in the
action of consumers' leagues at their international
conference held in Geneva, Switzerland, in Sep-
tember, 1908, when "it was unanimously voted
that all the leagues there represented take cogni-
zance of the experiment which was being undertaken
in England to establish a standard minimum wage
in the worst paid industries."! This new program
of reform serves at least to show that many care-
ful investigators are convinced that the evils of
home work can be cured only by direct attack
designed to increase the wages paid. It is an open
* Report from the Select Committee on Home Work, p. xii. Lon-
don, Vacher and Sons, 1908.
t Consumers' League of the City of New York. Annual report,
March, 1910. Address delivered by Mrs. Florence Kelley, p. 52.
142
"^ 4
1 .
3BB' |H
THE FLOWER TRADE AND THE LAW
secret that many advocates of this plan hope that
the home-work system would vanish altogether
once it were deprived of the main factor in its
growth, — the chance for employers to take ad-
vantage of the necessity and poverty of the work-
ers to get manufacturing done at a lower rate than
could possibly prevail in a factory. They reason
that to get rid of the evils of the system means to
abolish the system. Many are contending that
as a health measure manufacture in New York
City tenements should be absolutely prohibited
by law.
Certainly in the artificial flower trade no real
protection can be given to shop workers so long
as home work offers to the manufacturer an escape
from all the restrictions imposed by the factory
law. This means disaster not alone for the work-
ers but for the industry. So long as more than half
the work is done in tenement homes; so long as the
standards of the industry with reference to hours
of labor, overtime, seasons, and wages, are too low
to permit an adequate standard of living and effi-
ciency for the workers; so long must American
manufacturers be content with inferior work.
No protective tariff will suffice to enable them
really to rival the French product. How closely
related are the labor problems in Europe and
America, yet how different are some of the condi-
tions affecting the welfare of French and American
flower makers, will be set forth in the following
chapter.
i43
CHAPTER VII
THE ARTIFICIAL FLOWER TRADE IN
PARIS
AS the ancient Greeks believed in a fate
which they could not control, so the arti-
ficial flower manufacturer in New York
accepts as an immutable fact the superiority of
the Parisian flower maker. The value of imported
artificial flowers and feathers in the United States
in 1905 was $2,369,01 5,* and in the same year that
of the domestic product was $5, 246,822.1 Three
years later, in 1908, the value of imported flowers
and feathers had increased to $3,747,021. The
reputation of the foreign flower, however, t is in-
dicated not so much by comparative statistics of
the total value of the domestic and the imported
product as by the superiority of its position in the
market here. Many models come from Paris, and
domestic manufacturers are busied with the work
of copying these French designs.
These domestic manufacturers gave many rea-
sons for the greater success of the French flower
* Statistical abstract of the United States Census, 1908, p. 409.
t Ibid, p. 157.
$ Many flowers are imported from Germany, especially those of
small petals, such as lilacs, wistaria, and forget-me-nots. In this
chapter, however, the facts given concern French competition.
144
THE TRADE IN PARIS
makers. A few spoke of the tendency among
French manufacturers to specialize in the making
of one kind of flower. This they say results in a
far more beautiful product than is possible when
a variety of models are made in the same shop as is
the case usually in New York flower shops. More-
over, it gives the firm a reputation for a certain
specialty. Many referred to the speed with which
work must be done in New York. They lamented
the absence of an apprenticeship system in the
industry here, and complained that the wages
paid to New York flower makers were so much
higher than in Paris that America was handicapped
in competition.
The manager of one of the larger factories said
that speed particularly affected the evenness and
durability in the production of color. For ex-
ample, in making certain kinds of flowers four
days should be allowed, one for starching the ma-
terial, two for cutting, dyeing, and drying, and one
for the work of making, but manufacturers here
are sometimes expected to rush things through in a
single day. Artificial heat must then be used to
hasten the drying. Abroad, a man takes plenty of
time to experiment with his colors, and allows
them to dry naturally and then they last. An
importer with a large show room on Broadway
agreed with this statement and showed the visitor
a box of a hundred black quills which he had sent
out to be dyed. Every one had been ruined. He
believed that it was better to have the work done
"45
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
in Europe, even though the duty on prepared work
was 60 per cent, and on raw materials but 20 per
cent, because he said American colorers could
never produce a real black.*
The owner of a small shop, however, complained
that manufacturers here were not given a chance
to do good work; that importers went abroad and
stocked up with a general line of goods. Later in
the season, after a certain flower had grown popu-
lar, they expected the American manufacturers to
copy it at a moment's notice and for the same
price the importer had paid for the flower abroad.
In reproducing a certain flower he had had to
compete with a Paris firm that makes a specialty of
that blossom throughout the season. In another
shop the visitor was shown some very beautiful
roses which were not for sale but which had been
imported for models in the workroom. Material,
color, and form were all in marked contrast to
the American product. The foreman said that it
was impossible to copy the material, the color, or
the workmanship, as the manufacturer of these
flowers made roses and nothing but roses, all the
year round, whether the people wanted roses or
not. He knew he would sell them because he had
created a name for himself in them. But in New
York a manufacturer was obliged to make roses
one day, wheat the next, poppies the next, fancy
* An American dyer said that the difference between the water in
Paris and New York accounts for the greater success of the French
dyeing.
146
THE TRADE IN PARIS
feathers the next, and then very likely some
novelty that bore no resemblance to either flower
or feather.
In the matter of wages, an American employer
who had learned the trade in Paris made the un-
usual statement that good workmen were not to
be found here because skilled flower makers got
better wages in Paris and would not come to New
York. Others, however, disagreed with him, say-
ing that the American manufacturer was at a
disadvantage in competing with French prices
because he was obliged to pay higher wages than
the Parisian. This opinion was endorsed by the
French born wife of a New York manufacturer.
She declared also that one of the great difficulties
here lay in the lack of any training of the workers.
In France, a girl gives three years and her parents
pay money for her to learn the trade. In New
York fathers and mothers care only about the
four or five dollars a week their children can earn
and nothing about their learning a trade. If the
children cannot earn the money making flowers
they send them to a pearl button factory, or a
paper box factory, where they learn nothing. Not
only are workers better trained in France, she
said, but the people are more economical and able
to work for lower wages.
French competition, it will thus be seen, was a
factor much talked of in the flower trade in New
York. We felt, therefore, that our inquiry would
be incomplete unless we took this factor into
147
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
account and weighed the value of the opinions so
frequently expressed. To this end we asked Miss
Elizabeth S. Sergeant to secure data for us regard-
ing the trade in Paris, and particularly to ascertain
the accuracy of the statements of the New York
manufacturers that the superiority of French
workmanship was due to such causes as the low
cost of labor coupled with the low cost of living in
Paris, the apprenticeship system as contrasted
with our lack of any similar system, the alleged
superiority of Parisian design and workmanship,
and a steadier season due to the specialization by
firms in one kind of flower. We requested her to
lay especial stress in her inquiry upon the training
of workers.
Miss Sergeant made the investigation in 1910
during the months of May and June. Her
sources of information were two: first, her personal
investigation of 15 factories, two trade schools, 20
women employed in flower shops, and 16 home
workers; and, second, statistics obtained from
Mile. Caroline Milhaud, investigator for the Min-
istere de Travail, who had made an official study
of home work in this trade in Paris and the prov-
inces during 1907-09.* Miss Sergeant's statistical
report, with its descriptive material and her il-
luminating comments, forms the foundation of this
chapter.
* Miss Sergeant wrote: "The report of the official investigation
has not yet been published, is not yet edited in toto, so that the giving
of statistics to an outsider involved much time and patience on Mile.
Milhaud's part. This investigation was chiefly concerned with Paris
148
THE TRADE IN PARIS
In France, as in America, the making of artificial
flowers is an urban industry. Paris is its center.
Three provincial cities, however, — Reims, Lyons,
and Orleans, — include it among their important
industries, but it is said in France that only the
Parisian has the "chic" which really makes the
beauty of a flower's " cachet" (style). "This
style," said a French manufacturer, "is so subtle
and is obtained by so light a turn of the finger that
it escapes analysis, yet it quadruples the beauty
and the price of a flower. We have branch shops
in the provinces but none of our first class work is
done outside Paris. You cannot get the style
anywhere else."
No statistics could be obtained regarding the
number of flower makers in the provinces and even
for Paris the figures in the census of 1900 are not
complete. The Employers' Syndicate, however,
includes 500 shops in its membership, and in ad-
dition to these, Paris contains many small contract
shops and some large establishments which are not
admitted to the Syndicate.* The president of
(2 1 1 home workers were visited) and this is the only part considered
here.
"To M. Arthur Fontaine, permanent head of the Labor Bureau,
are due my chief thanks for his kindness and courtesy in furnishing
addresses, introductions to factory inspectors and manufacturers,
permits to visit trade schools, etc French flower manufacturers
guard their trade secrets very carefully, are indeed so much afraid
of foreign competition that it would have been impossible to visit
a single workshop without special introductions. M . Fontaine's com-
munication through Mile. Milhaud of the official and unpublished
government statistics for the use of the Russell Sage Foundation
has given this chapter its value."
* Chambre Syndicale des Fleurs et des Plumes.
149
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
the Syndicate estimates the total number of women
flower makers working in shops and at home in
Paris and its surrounding districts, to be 30,000,
while the flower and feather makers' union* be-
lieves that there are 28,000 workers in the trade
of whom 3,000 are men and 25,000 women. Of
these women 15,000, the union estimates, work at
home, and 10,000 work in the shops. These
figures show that probably more than twice as
many women are employed in the artificial flower
industry in Paris as in shops and home work in
New York.
We are told that the flower trade began to de-
velop in Paris about the middle of the eighteenth
century. Only scattered notes are available, how-
ever, to show its beginnings. "A man named
Joseph Wenzel," says the report of a French as-
sociation of flower and feather manufacturers,!
"was the first person to manufacture artificial
flowers, about 1750, using silk and fine cotton
material for the purpose. The novelty had a
universal vogue in France from the very begin-
ning. It is said that the Comte d'Artois, who
wished to win favor with the Queen, conceived the
idea of ordering from Wenzel some white roses of
which the petals represented the initials of Marie
Antoinette. Great enthusiasm followed; Wenzel
was made Merchant to the Queen; this fashion in
* L' Industrie Florale.
t Societe pour l'Assistance Paternelle aux Enfants Employes dans
Ies Industries des Fleurs et des Plumes. Report of May 23rd,
1909.
150
THE TRADE IN PARIS
gifts spread to other gentlemen of the Court, and
the Queen was so captivated that she went to
Wenzel's workroom to ask him to give her lessons
in this delicate and difficult art/'
The work of the Bouquetier, "maker of bou-
quets," is also described in the Dictionnaire por-
tatif des Arts et Metiers (Lacombe, 1756): "His
art consists in imitating with taffeta, batiste,
paper, feathers, parchment, silk cocoons, and other
suitable materials, all kinds of flowers and plants,
and in shading them so skilfully that they may be
mistaken for real flowers."
Although these accounts describe the early
period of the art the methods of making flowers
have remained much the same as they were then,
except that women now share in the work. The
position of the industry as a "Metier de luxe,"
however, could not last. " Like other industries
the artificial flower trade changed, the cheap
article was introduced and overwhelmed the
market," wrote L. and M. BonnefT in La Vie
Tragique des Travailleurs.* " Production became
unbridled. In order to extend the market for
artificial flowers, millinery was put within the reach
of the most limited purse, and the 'artistic crea-
tion* had to give way to the 'camelotte' (cheap
and nasty). This evolution was far from unfavor-
able to the manufacturers. Their business in-
creased, and the new openings for the sale of their
* Bonneff L. and M.: La Vie Tragique des Travailleurs, p. 305,
Paris, Jules Rauff, 1908.
151
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
goods made up for the decrease in the sale price.
But the workers' wages suffered; it was they who
had to pay for cheap millinery. Sub-division of
work followed and machinery was introduced."
PROCESSES AND SHOP CONDITIONS
The main processes of the trade are similar in
Paris and in New York. These are starching,
cutting, dyeing, preparing, making, branching,
and packing, and in name, at least, the division
of these tasks between men and women is the
same in the two cities. The starching of the
cloth, the cutting, and dyeing are done usually by
men;* preparing, making, branching, and packing
by women. As in New York, the preparation
of such material as stamens, pistils, cloth, and
wire, rank as separate trades. The methods of
work in the Paris shops, as in New York, vary
according to the grade of flower made.
The best "specialties" made are roses and "le
naturel," such as hortensea, orchids, peonies,
poppies, geraniums, and bachelor's buttons. The
other products made are small flowers, such as
lilacs, forget-me-nots, heather, and lilies of the
valley, foliage, fruit, flowers for decoration, and
celluloid and bead flowers for funeral wreaths.
Fleurs de luxe, flowers of the first quality, are all
*One woman dyer was seen at a large factory at work with five
other dyers, all men. In one factory all the dyers were women; the
employer said that this was because men dyers were heavy drinkers,
but the investigator thought that the more likely reason was the
lower cost of women's work.
152
Crimping Petals, New York
A Workroom in a One-time Residence, New York
THE TRADE IN PARIS
made in small workrooms, or by home workers
employed by them, while fleurs moyennes (middle
grade), and fleurs camelottes (cheap grade), are
made either in small shops owned by entrepre-
neuses, — women subcontractors, — or in large es-
tablishments of the factory type.
These small contract shops are found in large
numbers in suburban districts near the homes of
the working classes. But the chief flower fac-
tories in Paris are situated in the older business
section of the city in the great central wholesale
districts. They are housed in old buildings which
are often dark and dirty, and their narrow passage-
ways make the fire risk great. The sanitary con-
ditions in 15 shops visited by our investigator,
however, were with one exception reported as
"fair" or "good," but in the rooms where gas was
used in connection with the work the temperature
was found to be not always healthful.
The best quality flowers are frequently made in
small family workrooms, the husband and wife
taking an active part in the business. Often their
family has been in the trade for generations and
pride in their art is a part of their life. The wife
directs the women workers personally, gathering
flowers in her garden as models for the workroom.
Her husband oversees the dyeing, devising new
and secret processes. The workers are few, well
trained, comparatively well paid, and employed
the year round and often for a life-time. They
love their work, which is for them a craft in the
153
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
best sense of the word. This, it is said, was for-
merly the typical Parisian flower shop.
In the records of the investigation a small rose
shop of this grade is described. Here it is said
the most beautiful roses in the world are made.
The visitor found Mme. A. and her married sister,
both refined, gracious, and well dressed women,
sitting each at a daintily arranged little table on
opposite sides of the reception salesroom, working,
one at a moss rose, and one at a yellow tea rose.
The real flowers stood in water beside them. The
room was attractive and richly furnished, and
there were other flowers in vases. The artificial
flowers were kept in sliding drawers in cases
against the wall. Mme. A. explained that she
had seen the moss rose on the street that morning,
and had been eager to reproduce it. She had
copied even the crumpled, faded edges of the
buds, and it was difficult to say whether her rose
or the real rose was the more beautiful. On each
table was the usual flat rubber pad, the potato
standard into which the stem of the half made
rose was stuck, the gas heater, the long-handled
goffer with the ball on the end for hollowing the
petals, etc., pincers for crimping, and a paint box
and brush for retouching the finished roses from
nature. These last are found only in establish-
ments of this order. Usually all retouching of the
petals is done by the dyer and shader before mak-
ing. Mme. A. had learned the trade from her
mother. She had a married daughter who made
154
THE TRADE IN PARIS
flowers at home and another who was a sculptress
of talent. She said the secret of flower making
was the rotary movement of the fingers of the left
hand in winding stems and moulding buds. She
herself works four or five hours to make a rose
(apart from the process of dyeing, etc.), she ex-
plained, and added, " You must love flowers and
love your trade to succeed; apprenticeship lasts
all your life/'
In the main workroom of the shop were five
women : one apprentice, and four workers of long
standing, the one of twenty years' service acting
as the forewoman. All were making blue roses,
an order from a milliner. Mme. A. said she em-
ployed a dozen or so married women at home, all
of whom she had trained through an apprentice-
ship of three years. In two smaller rooms two
men and an apprentice boy were working on the
preliminary processes of preparing the cloth, cutting
petals, and dyeing. Only the finest batiste, nain-
sook, and organdie, such as are required for fine
lingerie, are used. Thick starch paste is made, and
after the material is soaked in it the cloth is
stretched on frames and dried in a hot closet.
When dry it is folded, laid on a flat lead pad, and a
die of the required shape slipped over it. This is
struck with a heavy hammer, thus cutting the
batiste or organdie into petals, great care being
taken that the edges shall be finely marked. The
dyer was a man of forty-five or fifty, who said he
had done nothing but dye flowers since the age of
155
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
seven. The petals are dyed a few at a time,
squeezed between the palms of the hands, tinted
again with a brush, and then dried on blotting
papers. Aniline dyes are not used, but instead
the shop has its own special process of preparing
colors. At the time of the visit the dyer was
tinting yellow rose petals from a real rose that
stood in a glass on his table. "You must always
have the rose before you or know it by heart," he
said.
Nothing not absolutely perfect was allowed to
leave these workrooms. Flowers were sold di-
rectly to exclusive and fashionable milliners as
well as to wholesale agents; often they were un-
mounted. The workers liked best to make roses
from nature, and the shop was full of many beauti-
ful finished products each almost lovelier than
nature itself. Except the foliage, all parts of the
flower, including the stamens, were made on the
premises.
Such a shop has no counterpart in New York,
nor are there many in Paris, and even the number
of these is said to be decreasing. Nevertheless,
they set a high standard of artistic work for French
flower makers, and thus their influence is greater
than their numbers. The best of our New York
establishments resemble more the large commercial
shops of Paris, where the medium grade of French
flowers are made, the medium grade in France cor-
responding to the best product in America.
Some machinery and a great deal of home work
156
THE TRADE IN PARIS
are characteristic of the large commercial shops.
It is interesting in a discussion of women's work
to note that the wife of the employer often takes
an active part with him in the technical phases of
the trade as well as in the business management of
the shop. Each department has its foreman and
forewoman (premiere), the former to supervise the
cutting and dyeing, and the latter to take charge
of the making and mounting, or branching. The
foremen and forewomen supervise all the workers
and distribute the work, marking in each worker's
book the number of the model, the time of begin-
ning and finishing, the number of gross, and the
price. Each shop has at least one dyeing room,
a hot closet for drying, a cutting room where
machine crimping is also sometimes done, and one
or more large workrooms for making and mount-
ing,— sometimes a separate room for each type of
flower, as for instance, the "rose room." In the
stock room with its counter and shelves, materials
are kept to be handed to the forewoman for dis-
tribution. Usually adjoining is a large store room
where completed flowers are packed in light wooden
boxes as soon as they are brought from the work-
room.
It is unnecessary to describe the processes in
detail but certain touches in the investigator's re-
port are interesting. Each woman makes the
whole flower, but branching is done by other work-
ers. The workers wear white linen aprons and sit
on stools at long tables, with their various tools
i57
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
before them. The rosemakers, when the petals
are ready, attach the inner ones to a wire stem,
stick its end into their potato standard, and add
petals, crimp the edges, and form the flower as it
hangs head downwards before them. The fingers
are used a great deal, with a characteristic rotary
movement of the thumb and finger of the left hand.
Because this is considered the first principle of
flower making, apprentices are made to practice it
every day.
An example of this type of shop was an im-
portant establishment in a wholesale district in
Paris. It occupied seven floors, with the offices
on the first, retail salesrooms on the second, and
workrooms and store rooms on the other five. In
the busy season 300 workers are employed and in
the slack season, 200. The cutting and crimping
of fine flowers was done by hand, but the shop was
equipped with modern machines for these processes
on cheaper flowers of certain types. Usually one
worker prepared and made the whole flower, and
another did the branching. The workers sat on
stools at long tables, on which were placed the
rubber pad, and the bowl of paste, potato stand-
ard, gas lamp, goffers, and pincers. The factory
was clean and light, and the proprietor, smug,
hard-faced, and well-groomed, affected great solici-
tude for the workers. He is a prominent mem-
ber of the Employers' Syndicate, and takes ap-
prentices from this association . Here once more,
as in the rose shoD described above, the investi-
158
THE TRADE IN PARIS
gator was told that the first principle of flower
making was the rotary movement of the thumb
and forefinger of the left hand, and that appren-
tices practice it with great regularity. The piece-
work rates in this establishment were calculated
on a basis of 12 cents an hour. The forewoman
got 200 francs a month ($40) and a percentage on
the work done by the girls.
The owner said that home work was unreliable
and that he depended upon it as little as possible.
He had two branch factories in Paris and others
in the provinces. Yet in spite of the excellent
physical conditions of this factory and the plaus-
ible statements of the owner in regard to home
work, comments of the workers cast doubt upon
his sincerity. "The place is a boite,,, * said one.
"One can't earn her living there." " He is one of
the worst of employers/' "He gives out an
enormous amount of home work, a great deal to
convents."
Methods in large factories which produce the
cheapest grade of flowers differ from those making
the medium grade in that the cloth is prepared
elsewhere, and then often dyed in the piece instead
of first having been cut into petals. More work
is done by machines than in the better grade of
shops and the number of home workers is larger.
One of these shops is thus described: The work-
rooms were situated on two floors around a rather
dirty court. They were almost empty at the date
* Slang for a "horrid hole."
1 59
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
of the visit in July. In the season, however, 50
workers are employed in the shop, and 400 home
workers. The employer refused to state wages,
but a notice on the wall of the workroom read:
"Workers who earn less than $3.60 per week will
be dismissed, prices having been calculated on a
basis of 70 cents per day." This daily sum ap-
parently allowed a margin between the daily
estimate and the minimum weekly production
expected.* The cloth was bought all prepared,
the dyeing being done mostly in the piece, and the
cutting and crimping wholly by machinery. The
making was all done by home workers, also part
of the branching. This factory is considered one
of the worst in Paris in regard to wages and work-
manship. Good workers cite it as a place where,
in spite of the sign on the wall, you cannot earn
40 cents a day, and where no good worker would
go willingly. Yet the visitor made this comment
on the product of the establishment: "Flowers
seen here were distinctly above the level of those
in New York tenements and would seem of good
quality in America."
The small contract shops conducted by entre-
preneurs represent a different type of establish-
ment. Sometimes the owner has been a home
worker, who now employs young girls to help her.
The only processes done in these small shops are
the making and the branching, the petals having
* This was evidently not a statement of wage rates, but a scheme
for speeding up the workers.
160
> • * » • ' »
. > » >
4 J .
•• \J ' ' >
Rose Makers, New York
Preparing the Petals, New York
THE TRADE IN PARIS
been prepared, cut, and dyed in the larger shops
from which the contractor has received her work.
SEASONS AND WAGES
The seasons in the flower trade in Paris vary
according to changes in fashion, and types of
" specialties," and the statements of workers and
manufacturers on this subject are by no means
uniform. In some shops of the best grade and in
factories where both flowers and feathers were
made, manufacturers reported that workers were
employed throughout the year. In the medium
grade establishments they said that probably a
third were laid off, and in the cheap shops, two-
thirds or more. As an illustration of the irregu-
larity of employment of shop and home workers
alike government investigators cited the fact that
of 170 home workers, in were unemployed at
some time during the year. Of 87 reporting
definitely on the subject of loss of time, 31 lost
from one to two months; 35, from three to five
months ; and 2 1 , six months or more. The busiest
season precedes the spring millinery trade. Work
on flowers for exportation may begin in Novem-
ber, while those for France give employment be-
ginning in January. By Easter or Whitsunday,
the spring season ends. Flowers for winter hats
are made in July, August, or September, but em-
ployment at this time is very irregular, depending
upon the fashions. It is becoming the custom
now for French flower makers to learn the feather
161
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
trade as a resource for slack season, whereas for-
merly they could make flowers the year round.
Even now it appears that the proportion of workers
employed steadily through the dull season is
larger in Paris than in New York.
As in New York, employers during the busy
season give out flowers to their shop hands to take
home at night and on Sundays. They say they
must fill their orders and that this extra work is a
blessing to the girls since they must earn what they
can when trade is brisk in order to save up for the
bad season. The girls give a different explana-
tion, saying they have to take the work or they
would lose their places. They complain, too,
that employers always give them the most difficult
and unsatisfactory models to make at home. They
say, however, that they could not support them-
selves without this extra work, thus indirectly re-
vealing an inadequate standard of wages in the
trade.
Information about wages in the shops was not
comprehensive. Many persons interviewed, in-
cluding workers, investigators, and a factory in-
spector, stated that 40 cents a day was approx-
imately the average wage for the trade as a whole,
while for the best specialties the workers received
from 60 cents to $1.00 a day. After three years
of apprenticeship a flower maker is expected to
earn 60 cents a day in the season, and later, after
more experience, $1.00 or $1.20. Employers in-
terviewed emphasized the maximum possibilities
162
THE TRADE IN PARIS
in the busy season. The estimates of five are
given.
A. Best flowers, maximum earnings $14 a week.
B. Best flowers, |i.oo or $1.20 a day. . $6.oo-$7.oo a week,
C. Roses (average grade), 90 cents or
$1.00 a day $540-$6.oo a week.
D. Medium grade, 12 cents per hour,
$1.00 a day $6.00 a week.
E. Feathers and foliage, $5.00 average;
in season $6.oo-$io a week.
Flower makers interviewed by Miss Sergeant
happened all to be skilled workers who had served
a three years' apprenticeship. Four reported the
following wages:
I. Maker of fine flowers; aged thirty-
eight; twenty-one years in trade;
is now head woman in small
factory at f 1.20 per day or $7.20 a week.
II. Ostrich feathers, supplemented by
wheat making; aged forty; 60
cents to $1.00 a day $3.6o-$6.oo a week.
III. Feathers and flowers; aged thirty;
seventeen years in trade and
seven years in same shop; counts
on 80 cents per day the year
round, and on $1.40 in season., .l4.80-f8.40 a week.
IV. Rose maker; aged twenty-four;
eight years' experience since
apprenticeship. Total for twelve
weeks, shown in her book of
earnings, $61.86 or about $5.16 a week.
If we may judge from these few instances,
backed by the statements of those familiar with
163
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
the trade, fioa week is a rare wage, while a large
number doubtless earn less than $5.00. Neverthe-
less, United States census figures already quoted
showed that about 40 per cent of the workers earned
less than $5.00 in a busy week in the year, while
only about 1 3 per cent received $10 or more. The
census average in the United States for all flower
makers sixteen years of age and over was $6.20.
Data about French flower makers' earnings are not
comprehensive enough to be comparable and yet
they do not prove that the scale in Paris compared
with New York payrolls, is as low as the American
manufacturers claim.
COST OF LIVING
In estimating the comparative value of wages
it is important to know the cost of living in Paris.
While these were difficult data to obtain during so
brief and limited an investigation, certain illus-
trative information was secured as fairly repre-
sentative of conditions there. The secretary of
the women's union in the trade gave the following
food budget for factory workers living alone. She
called it the budget of the "rush season," implying
that food must be reduced when the season is over.
Breakfast $.03
Lunch — Soup 02
Cutlet 08
Wine 02
Bread 01
Vegetable and dessert 03
Total 16
164
THE TRADE IN PARIS
Afternoon — Bread and chocolate 02
Dinner— Meat 06
Bread 01
Cheese or fruit 03
Wine 02
Total 12
Total food per day $.33
This is an estimate based, to be sure, on the sort
of reliable knowledge which the secretary of a
trade union is likely to possess, but it does not
represent actual expenditures. The budget of a
woman who made flowers at home is interesting
because it is real, and not estimated. She was
evidently, however, exceptionally economical, and
must have been deprived of many real necessities.
She was a widow of sixty-two who earned $60 a
year (20 cents a day) making small flowers, and
received in addition $3.00 per month, or $36 a
year from the city. This "Assistance Publique"
had been given her since the death of a brother
who had formerly helped her by a small regular
contribution. For the love of old associations she
lived in an expensive district, but her one room
was very small. It was spotless and shiny, for her
rent and her soap were her only extravagances.
She preferred "to go hungry rather than to do
without soap." She never went out except for
necessary errands. Clothes were given her occa-
sionally; she never bought them. In the year
preceding the interview she said she had made over
165
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
more than two dozen pairs of old stockings. She
had bought almost no meat except an occasional
four cents' worth for soup, which was her chief
diet. Her yearly budget follows:
Bread, 3 cents per day $10.95
Milk, 2 cents per day 7 . 30
Coffee, 20 cents per month 2.40
Sugar, 1 kilo a year 1 . 68
Vegetables, potatoes or cress, 2 cents per day 7.30
Cheese or egg, 2 cents per day 7 . 30
Soap, washing soda, 20 cents per month 2.40
Kerosene, 3 litres a week, 5 months of a year 6.00
Butter, 8 cents per week 4. 16
Total expenditure for food $49.49
Rent per year 34.00
Total yearly budget $83.49
Total yearly income $96.00
Comparison between the cost of living in New
York and in Paris would be impossible with so
little data on this subject for either city.
One method of comparison is to ascertain the
rank of the artificial flower industry among other
occupations for women in the two cities. In New
York the flower makers' earnings are approxi-
mately equal to the general scale for all manufactur-
ing pursuits grouped together. In Paris, flower
making seems to rank among the better paid trades.
Dressmaking is the most important occupation for
Parisian women. It is said that in the large es-
tablishments the majority earn 60 cents a day, and
166
THE TRADE IN PARIS
the highest daily wage to workroom hands is 80
cents, $1.00, or $1.20. The small dressmaking
shops pay from 40 to 80 cents. Similar rates ap-
parently prevail in the printing trades and in
millinery. In cotton mills the earnings are less.
In state factories where tobacco and matches are
manufactured the workers are organized and aver-
age $1.00 a day, a wage said to be higher than in
other trades.* The flower makers' earnings ap-
parently do not suffer by comparison with these
other occupations except in the case of workers on
tobacco and matches in state factories. Of course,
in Paris as in New York, the low earnings of women
workers are a grave social problem. "In Paris a
worker who earns 75 cents a day may be considered
well paid " (in comparison with the general level
of women's earnings), writes a student of social
conditions. t "Nevertheless, if unemployment in
slack season (105 days per year including Sundays
and holidays) be discounted, the annual earnings
for the 260 remaining days do not exceed $195 or
about 53 cents per day. If the woman allows 18
cents each for two principal meals, a low estimate,
certainly, if her rent is $30 per year and her light
costs only $2.50, with certain necessary expenses
she will be unable to make the two ends meet at the
end of the year.
* These statements were made to Miss Sergeant by Mile. Milhaud
and were supported by references to L. M. Campain, La Femme dans
les organisations ouvrieres; Milhaud, L'Ouvriere en France; Bul-
letin de l'office du Travail, etc., and P. de Maroussem, Le Vetement
a Paris, p. 520.
t Benoist, Les ouvrieres de l'aiguille a Paris, p. 35.
167
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
HOME WORK
Home workers outnumber shop employes in the
flower trade in Paris, as they do in New York; and,
as in New York, conditions in the shops cannot
be thoroughly understood if the home workers
are left out of account. Between the home-work
system in Paris and in New York, however, the
differences are marked. First is the fact that the
French home worker is not at the bottom of the
scale from the point of view of skill. Of 2 1 1 home
workers investigated by Mile. Milhaud, 147, or
70 per cent, had been in flower shops before work-
ing at home; half of these had worked more than
five years in shops, in addition to the time of their
apprenticeship. The length of this employment is
in striking contrast to the practice in New York,
where of the mothers found engaged in the indus-
try at home only 8 per cent had ever worked in
flower shops. Expert work is by no means un-
common among Parisian home workers, while in
New York the typical home work is of the cheapest
grade. Home work is indeed more ingrained in
life and custom in Paris than in New York. The
home worker who has learned a trade before her
marriage continues it afterward in a spirit of in-
terest in her work and pride in her skill which pre-
vents many of the evils of " sweating " found among
the unskilled workers in New York City tenements.
The second difference between New York and
Paris is the cleanliness and attractiveness of the
168
THE TRADE IN PARIS
rooms of the Parisian home workers. This is said
to be more noticeable among flower makers than
among workers in other industries.
The third marked difference is that, whereas in
New York nearly half the home workers investi-
gated were found to be children under sixteen
years of age, in Paris the work of children still in
school, under twelve or thirteen years of age, was
an almost unknown occurrence. Mile. Milhaud
could recall only one case, a child seven years old,
of very poor family, who was kept out of school to
work. She knew of a boy of eleven who helped
after school, and of two children who helped on
Thursday, the day of their half holiday. If these
facts are typical (and they are the statements of
an investigator of long experience), this absence of
child labor is doubtless due in large measure to
the superior grade of work in Paris. 1 1 is the cheap
quality of the flowers made in the tenements of
New York that makes possible the use of the un-
skilled fingers of little children.
Of 208 Parisian home workers reporting on this
point, 44 were single women, 41 widows, four
divorced or deserted married women, and 1 1 9
married women living with their husbands. The
husbands of 55 of these latter were workingmen,
employed mainly in skilled and well-paid occupa-
tions, such as jewelry, flower making, machinery,
and printing. Their wives' wages were often
supplementary and not indispensable. In about 12
cases the workers were the wives of day laborers,
169
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
and their earnings, although supplementary, were
necessary. Statistics were not given for the re-
mainder of the group of married women. Of the
41 widows, 18 shared the home responsibilities
with another member of the family, 14 lived alone
and were self-supporting, and nine were heads of
households with old people or children depending
upon them for support. Of the single women, 28
lived at home and their earnings supplemented the
family income, eight lived alone and were obliged
to be self-supporting, and eight helped in the sup-
port of others.
Some home workers secure the flowers directly
from the factory, and it is said that piece-work
rates for these flowers equal shop rates for the same
model. A large number, however, get their
orders from the entrepreneur, who "farms out"
work, thus saving the employer much time and
trouble. The contractor is hated by the work-
ers, who believe that she makes great profits by
forcing their wages down. Often, however, the
contractor is very poor; her percentage is said
to be small and the worker may earn as much as
though she had spent time going to the factory for
her materials.
Differences in the grades of flowers are so great
that a comparison of piece-work rates in New York
and in Paris is futile. Unless we know how long it
takes to make a flower, the rate per piece is mean-
ingless as a contribution to wage statistics. But a
glance through a long list of Parisian rates reveals
170
THE TRADE IN PARIS
prices very like those reported in New York tene-
ments. For example, home workers in New York
frequently stated such rates as 3 cents a gross for
cheap violets, and 5, 10, or 15 cents for more
elaborate ones. The Paris list showing piece-work
rates for violets is as follows:
Quality . Rates per gross
For decoration 6 cents
Parma, first quality, large 20 cents
Parma, first quality, small 18 cents
Parma, first quality, black 15 cents
Parma, ordinary 5 cents
Russian violets 1 cent
In judging the earnings of French home workers,
it should be remembered how large a proportion of
those interviewed in the investigation had been
employed in factories before pursuing the occupa-
tion at home, and were considered skilled flower
makers. The government investigators in Paris
believed that this proportion of women who had
worked in shops was typical throughout the home
industry, and that the statistics of earnings given
on page 172 (Table 32) were representative of
home workers generally in this trade.
More than half of the women, 48, earned from
$30 to $90 in a year; 24, or slightly more than
a fourth, earned more than $100. The report
shows in greater detail that one rose maker earned
$360 and one maker of wild flowers (le naturel)
about $285, both exceptional. Of the women
171
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
TABLE 32. — YEARLY EARNINGS OF 85 PARISIAN
WOMEN WORKING AT HOME ALONE, ON THREE
SPECIALTIES IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS
Yearly earnings
HOME WORKERS WHOSE YEAR-
LY EARNINGS WERE AS SPEC-
IFIED FROM WORK ON
Total
"Natu-
ral"
flowers
Roses
Small
flowers
$30 and not over $90 .
Over $90 and not over $100
Overfioo ....
9
5
10
21
5
14
18
3
48
24
Total ....
24
40
21
85
who had fellow workers in making the flowers
at home, the government investigator estimated
that slightly more than a fourth earned from
$30 to I90 in a year, and three-fourths earned
from $90 to $160 or more. All these statistics
must be used cautiously, for the difficulty of es-
timating the yearly income of a seasonal worker is
doubtless as great in Paris as in New York. The
custom of keeping a book of earnings is, how-
ever, very general among French flower makers,
and as the data were in many cases secured
from these written records, the inaccuracies are
minimized. Nevertheless, it is probable that
Table 33, showing the daily wages in the busy
season instead of a yearly wage, is more exact, as
no estimate of lost time is needed in connection
with it.
172
THE TRADE IN PARIS
TABLE 33. — DAILY EARNINGS IN THE BUSY SEASON
OF 79 PARISIAN WOMEN WORKING AT HOME
ALONE ON THREE SPECIALTIES IN
ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS
HOME WORKERS WHOSE DAILY
EARNINGS WERE AS SPECI-
Daily earnings
FIED FROM
WORK ON
Total
"Natu-
ral"
Roses
Small
Others »
flowers
flowers
20 cents or less .
1
1
4
3
9
Over 20 cents and not over
40 cents ....
3
8
9
6
26
Over 40 cents and not over
60 cents
3
1 1
2
4
20
Over 60 cents and not over
80 cents ....
7
4
1
4
16
Over 80 cents and not over
$1.00 ....
2
3
1
6
Over $1.00 ....
2
2
Total ....
16
29
16
18
79
a Includes foliage, fruit, feathers, and flowers for decoration, cellu-
loid and bead flowers.
The "median" wage, — half the workers earning
less, — according to this table, is between 41 and 60
cents a day, or more specifically, according to the
detailed data, between 41 and 50 cents. These
figures would indicate roughly a median weekly
wage of $2.40 to $3.00. The corresponding median
wage in New York lies between $4.00 and $5.00,
and that not for one worker but for a household.
The Paris figures show individual earnings.
Details of the earnings and the experience of one
or two of the workers included in these tables are
173
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
illuminating.* One was that of a girl, twenty-
eight years old, who made the best quality roses.
She had worked for eleven years at Maison M., an
excellent house, which employs 60 workers. The
best workers are paid at the rate of 14 cents per
hour in the shop. This girl decided to work at
home because she was over-tired. Her brother
was a traveling salesman, and her mother, whom
she helped to support, a widow. She earned in a
year less at home than in the factory, but ex-
plained this as due not to differences in rates but
to a bad year for the trade, ill health, and lack of
the overtime she would have had in the workroom.
Statements of her earnings follow.
Monthly Earnings at Home of a Parisian Flower Maker
from November, 1907, to October, 1908
(November $
\ December *****
1908 January 29 . 29
February 29.00
March 29 . 65
April 20 . 00
May 13.00
June (No work)
July 14.00
August (No work)
September 1 1 . 17
October (1 week) 7 . 54
Total earnings for the period $185 . 79
* Miss Sergeant interviewed a home worker who made bead flowers
and thus described the conditions of her home and her work:
"Mme. L.: Pretty woman, twenty-eight years old, living in tiny
apartment of three neat rooms, near the cemetery known as Pere-
*74
[907
THE TRADE IN PARIS
During the period of nearly a year this flower
maker worked only 31 weeks. Her average week-
ly earnings when at work were, therefore, $5.99.
Sample Month, Showing Weekly Earnings at Home
of the Same Flower Maker
1908 Week of January 4th $3 .30
Week of January 1 ith 8.40
Week of January 18th 8.54
Week of January 25th 9.05
Total for January $29 . 29
Monthly Earnings in Workroom of the Same Flower
Maker from December, 1906, to
October, 1907, Inclusive
1906 December '. $28 . 88
1907 January 2569
February 26. 10
March 25.55
April 21 .75
May 13 .03
June *. 21 .92
July 36.51
August (No work)
September 28.98
October 9.61
Total income for 1 1 months $238.02
Average monthly wage (excluding August) 23 .80
Lachaise. Husband earns $1.00 per day; Mme. L. earns from 20
to 60 cents per day in making bead flowers for funeral wreaths.
Says pay for leaves and wire frames is so poor that when, as sometimes
happens, she has a private order for a wreath, she buys them ready
made. She works on Sundays and holidays. Whole family is asleep
by 7:30 p. m. and up at 5:30 a m. Counts on nine or ten hours'
work per day. Five children under seven years (two boys, three
175
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
Thus she earned sometimes as little as $3.30 in
a week, and at other times more than $9.00. Her
case reminds one of the skilled brancher inter-
viewed in New York whose wages at home ap-
proached shop rates more nearly than is usual
among home workers, but whose income from
home work tended to fluctuate just as did the
earnings of this Parisian girl.
Another was a woman forty-five years old,
whose husband, a tinman, earned $1.00 a day.
They had a daughter of eighteen, a vestmaker,
who had earned 45 cents a day during the six
weeks just passed but who before that had earned
only 30 cents. There were three other children —
a boy of sixteen years whom the parents supported,
a boy of thirteen, apprenticed, and a boy of four
at school. The total family earnings were $501 .52,
and of these slightly more than $100 was earned
by the mother by work at home on flowers. The
figures on the opposite page show her monthly
earnings, making foliage and occasionally lilacs.
These earnings seem to be approximately equal
to the wages of home workers in New York, except
that the work was steadier throughout the year
than is usual here. To make flowers all summer
would seem exceptionally good fortune to a New
York home worker.
girls; two are babies too young to walk) and another on way. Old
invalid mother, who was formerly a washerwoman. Two elder chil-
dren in school but return for lunch. Two boys sleep in room (sepa-
rate beds) with grandmother; mother and father and three youngest
(in cribs) sleep in larger bedroom. In tiny kitchen they live and
work. Rooms are so clean that they are attractive."
176
THE TRADE IN PARIS
i
Monthly Earnings of a Parisian Home Worker
on Artificial Flowers from November, 1907,
to October, 1908, Inclusive
1907 November $8.58
December 13 .90
1908 January 13 .92
February 8.50
March 6.35
April 7.74
May 8.34
June 10.50
July 8.81
August 6.95
September 7.21
October 6. 18
Total earnings for 12 months $106.98
Average weekly wages 2 .06
The hours of work are always so variable when
a woman works at home that they defy statistical
treatment. Nevertheless, the French investiga-
tors report the following on this point :
TABLE 34. — DAILY HOURS OF WORK OF PARISIAN
HOME WORKERS ON ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS
Daily hours of work
WOMEN WORKING AT HOME
THE NUMBER OF HOURS
SPECIFIED
Number
Per cent
Less than 10 hours ....
10 hours and not more than 12 hours .
More than 12 hours ....
69
77
18
42
47
1 1
Total
164
100
177
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
Hours of labor in flower shops seldom exceed
ten. This is the legal limit. No woman and no
minor under eighteen may work more than ten
hours a day or after 9 p. m. because night work,
in the words of a French decree, "ruins health
and disorganizes family life." Formerly an ex-
ception to this law was permitted in dressmaking,
millinery, lingerie, and the fur trade, whereby
women over eighteen in these seasonal trades
might work until 11 p. m. sixty days in the year,
but by a decree in 1910, this exception is now
limited to mourning millinery and mourning
clothing for women and children.*
The law provides for one full holiday in
seven days, and a rest period of one hour in each
day's work. The employment of children under
twelve is prohibited and children who work before
they are thirteen must have secured a school cer-
tificate and a doctor's certificate. Other sections
of the law concern ventilation, cleanliness, guard-
ing of machinery, and indemnity for accident.
The manufacturer of artificial flowers is not
tempted to violate the law by lengthening the day
in the shop. It is more convenient to have the
work taken home, and the workers may, and do,
continue to make flowers "until midnight or
later."
Legal regulation of the home-work system in
France is brief in the telling. The government
♦United States Department of Commerce and Labor. Bulletin
of the Bureau of Labor, No. 89, p. 154. July, 1910.
178
THE TRADE IN PARIS
neither regulates nor inspects the conditions in
these home workrooms, except when outsiders are
employed for wages. This does not mean, how-
ever, that no regulation is needed. That intelli-
gent and thoughtful workers, at least, realize that
home work is a dangerous factor in their trade, is
indicated by one of the small notices printed and
distributed by the flower makers' union which
reads: "Avoid women contractors and work in the
workroom. Your earnings will increase."
TRADE UNIONISM
Trade union organization is not a popular idea
among French flower makers. They are said to
share with milliners the reputation of being the
most light-headed and frivolous of the working
women of Paris. Nevertheless, a few at least
have shown themselves capable of devotion to the
cause represented in the labor movement.
Two labor unions exist in the industry in Paris.
The largest and most important, T Industrie
Florale, is called the men's union though theoret-
ically for both sexes. The women members, how-
ever, are few. In 1896 a women's union, Fleur-
istes et Plumassieres (flower and feather makers),
was founded with the aid of 1' Industrie Florale.
It is directed by two intelligent flower makers, but
its membership is not increasing. Between this
organization and the men's union is a difference of
opinion as to whether it is better to have men and
women organized together in one union. The
179
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
women consider that fewer women would join and
that in any case their interests would suffer in
uniting men and women in one organization. The
men do not agree with them and in support of their
contention that women should be members of the
men's union they cite the decision of the socialist
congress of Amiens that only one union in a single
trade might join the labor exchange. The women's
union has been weakened by this contention, and
also by its failure to maintain a co-operative work-
room which the women had organized after long
planning and for which they had raised the sum of
a thousand francs. Its financial failure after brief
trial was attributed by some of its critics to lack
of capital, by others to lack of unity of action and
business training among the women organizers.
Few in number as the union members are, how-
ever, and discouraging as some of their efforts
have been, they are much in earnest in their desire
to help other women.
Mademoiselle B., a leader in the women's union,
was one of the organizers of this co-operative fac-
tory. She also taught a trade class for apprentices
under the auspices of the union. She is now, after
twenty-one years' experience, earning |i .20 a day.
Her advanced ideas, she says, have never hurt her
chances for employment. She has adopted a child
of eight, who is destined by her to be a flower
maker and "to help the cause of women."
A pretty girl of twenty-four, Mademoiselle M.,
is another flower maker who is absorbed in social
180
THE TRADE IN PARIS
ideas. Although highly skilled, wrote the inves-
tigator who met her, very "serious," and spend-
ing nothing on frivolity, she has never been able
to be wholly self-supporting. Her parents have
always provided her with clothing. They now
live in Algiers and she might live there and not
work, but she prefers to support herself in Paris,
and "help her fellow workers to liberate them-
selves." She occupies a small room with a girl
who is studying at the Sorbonne. Her food costs
her 50 cents a day.
Of the workers' attitude toward the employers the
investigator wrote, "All workers interviewed say
that they live in terror of the employer, and don't
dare to protest against a bad model,* or complain
if they are not earning enough. Madeline, a
pretty girl who believes in unions, told how she
once persuaded her fellow workers to refuse to
make a very bad model; that is, one on which the
piece rates were unfair. The forewoman, secretly
sympathetic, encouraged them in rebellion. Made-
line described the harrowing day in which they all
sat idle and trembling, the electric bell constantly
ringing to call the forewoman to the office, the
* The models are created by the employer, by the forewoman, or
sometimes by a clever worker. The commissionaire, or wholesale
agent, then examines it, and if he accepts it a piece rate of payment for
making it is fixed in consultation between employer, forewoman, and
commissionaire, according to the time taken by the most skilled
worker to make it. The slower workers always suffer in consequence.
In this connection it is interesting to recall the plan used in a book-
binding establishment in New York. At the suggestion of the women's
trade union, the piece rates on a new job are fixed not by timing the
most rapid worker, but by averaging the rate of production of three
workers, one rapid, one slow, and one of average speed.
181
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
employer finally coming up to swear at them. He
was in the end obliged to yield, but not before he
had made the forewoman confess that she had sup-
ported the girls in their insubordination. Even
when obliged to leave because of low pay, the
girls are afraid to give the reason to employers."
Yet in spite of the helplessness of the individual
woman worker and the courageous effort of the
stronger among them, the "pretty and frivolous"
and the "sweated" workers (sometimes these are
one and the same) are quite unconvinced of the
desirability of joining the union.
The demands made by the union are shown
most clearly in small notices, "papillons," 2 by 3
inches in size, which are distributed widely by the
men's union, in their effort to educate the workers
in ideas of organization and solidarity.
" Flower makers, foliage makers, feather workers! If you
wish to see your condition improve, the only method is to
organize yourselves."
"Instead of doing bad work (sabotage), let us do artistic
work."
"Everything is going up but our wages; let us bestir
ourselves."
"English workmen work slowly. Let's follow their ex-
ample."
"Every birth in a worker's family increases the sum of
producers and of misery."
"Every birth in a rich man's home increases the number of
parasites."
"Let's limit the number of our children unless [a
manufacturer's name] will provide them with nursing
bottles."
182
THE TRADE IN PARIS
"A porter [in a factory] likes beefsteak as well as a dyer
does, and a dyer likes it as well as his employer."
"We must limit the number of apprentices and young
untrained workers" (petites mains).
" Every Union member should also be a member of a co-
operative society."
"We are laid off because we work too hard in the good
season."
"Avoid women contractors and work in the workroom.
Your earnings will increase."
"When we are obliged to work overtime we must demand
50% more."
"Union makes the strength of Capitalism. Solidarity
amongst the workers will counter-balance this."
"Workrooms must be periodically disinrected."
"No trade is more adapted than ours for earning money,
for nothing is more poetic than Flowers and Birds? ? ?"
"Socrates drank out of his hand. When we are laid off we
have a glass, but nothing to put in it."
APPRENTICESHIP AND TRAINING
The interest of the women's union in the estab-
lishment of a class for apprentices shows how im-
, portant, from the workers' point of view, is the
opportunity to be well trained for the trade. It
is in the variety of opportunities to secure this
training that Paris conditions offer the greatest
contrast to New York. In France a young girl 1/
may learn the trade in one of four ways: by ap-
prenticeship in the workroom, by an apprentice-
ship to a sub-contractor, by learning from her
flower-making parents, or by attending a class, a
school, or a convent. Of 199 home workers ques-
tioned on this point by Mile. Milhaud only 21
183
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
had served no apprenticeship. Of the remaining
178, 77, or about two in five, had learned in the
workroom; 55, or nearly a third, had been taught
by sub-contractors; 34, or nearly one-fifth, by
parents; and only 12 had learned in classes,
schools, or convents.
Classes for flower makers are held in two mu-
nicipal trade schools. The pupils are chosen by
competitive examination at the close of the Ecole
Primaire, at the age of twelve or thirteen years.
Instruction is free and the course lasts three years.
Small scholarships are provided for some of the
pupils. General school work is given in the morn-
ing and trade work in the afternoon. The
teachers of the two classes visited had been in
trade but had had no recent workroom experience.
The teacher of one class said that the three years
in the school were equivalent to one year in the
workroom, but that although on first entering the
trade their pupils did not compare favorably with
apprentices who had had three years of shop
practice, later they were likely to outstrip them,
because of the better foundation given in the
school work. These classes in flower making
attract fewer pupils than other classes in the
school. Employers have nothing good to say of
them. All who were interviewed regarded them
as worthless. "Some statements are open to
discussion," said one, "but this is as invariable as
the fact that day follows night." Nevertheless,
Mile. Milhaud's conclusion, after completing her
184
4*
THE TRADE IN PARIS
investigation, was that statistics proved the
teachers' contention that their pupils made rapid
progress in the trade.
The convent classes which train flower makers
are regarded with bitterness by many of the
workers, for the work is done by charity children
who receive no remuneration and the manufac-
turer pays the convent but a small price for it.
Of five home workers trained in convents, Mile.
Milhaud, who interviewed them, reported that
three were at work on badly paid specialties.*
Apprenticeship to a sub-contractor is a form of
workroom training but it is considered undesirable
because of the cheap grade of flower handled by
sub-contractors. The form of training which em-
ployers believe to be most valuable is that given
in a flower factory where it is possible to see a
variety of models, to measure up to real trade
demands, and to acquire speed.
This workroom training is a definite system in
the trade in Paris, and employers appear to have
given much more attention to the problem than
in New York where even the word "apprentice-
* Miss Sergeant thus reports her interview with two home workers
trained in convents:
"One was a concierge who had made nothing but forget-me-nots
all her life. Learned in convent which worked for M. Now works
for a contractor ten hours per day, earning 25 cents per day; i. e.,
25 cents per gross of sprays. This includes making, mounting each
spray, five blossoms and one leaf. The other home worker was of
Italian extraction. She and her two sisters learned to make violets
in a convent. Makes only fine black Parma violets at 15 cents per
gross. As she has housework, several children, and a lame husband
to attend to, she earns only 10 cents to 1 5 cents per day."
.85
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
ship" is practically unused in the trade. In Paris,
in some flower shops though not in all, an unwritten
and informal agreement regarding the conditions
of a child's apprenticeship is made, and usually
kept, between parents and employer. Learners
receive 10 cents a day for the first six months, with
5 or 10 cents raise each succeeding six months; 40
cents at the end of two years; and usually 40,
sometimes 50 or 60 cents, after three years. The
forewoman takes charge of the learners, usually
placing them next to experienced workers. Each
process is taught, and care is taken to give practice
in the deft movement of the left thumb and fore-
finger. Later the apprentice may become a special-
ist in some one type of flower. Although this
method of training prevails in many establish-
ments, workrooms are now found where "learn-
ers" are simply unskilled hands taking part in the
production of cheap flowers. Fortunately for the
French worker this condition, so usual in New
York, is still exceptional in Parisian shops.
To preserve this careful system of training and
to extend it, the Employers' Syndicate in 1866
organized the Societe pour TAssistance Paternelle
aux Enfants Employes dans les Industries des
Fleurs et des Plumes. "The object of the society
is to insure a good trade apprenticeship and to look
after, help, and influence for good by all means
that it esteems useful, children employed as ap-
prentices in the flower and feather industries."
Apprentices are placed in workrooms and their
186
THE TRADE IN PARIS
training is supervised by delegates of the society.
Free courses are offered in elementary instruction
and design for all apprentices in the flower and
feather houses. Competitive contests are held
and honorary prizes are awarded to employers,
teachers, workers, or any others who further the
purpose of the society. Private boarding houses
are maintained for young girl apprentices whose
parents cannot provide for them.
The contract between employer and apprentice,
drawn up by this society, carefully defines the
details of training and its conditions.* The em-
ployer undertakes to teach the trade "freely and
fully" so that at the expiration of the specified
term the learner will be able to practice it. He
may not require any other tasks nor send her on
frequent or distant errands. He must supervise
her conduct and treat her gently like a good
father ("un bon pere de famille"). He must
provide her with tools and make it possible for
her to take part in the yearly trade competi-
tion of the industry. Moreover, he must accept
the supervision of a delegate appointed by the
society.
The apprentice agrees "to receive with atten-
tion, respect, and docility, the lessons and orders of
her master." If during her apprenticeship she
loses time exceeding a fortnight, for illness or any
other cause, she agrees to make it up after the end
of her term. Her guardian undertakes to use his
* See Appendix D, for copy of contract and description of society.
187
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
authority to keep her in the workroom throughout
the period named in the contract, to allow her to be
under the supervision of the delegates of the society,
and generally to see that she carries out all her
obligations under the contract. The first two
months are a trial period during which the agree-
ment may be annulled by either side.
The president of the society thus sums up its
achievements (1909) : " Last year at this same date
we declared at this same place that the apprentice-
ship crisis had been less serious in our manufacture
than anywhere else, and we found the principal
cause of this consoling state of things to be not
only in the absence of machinery, but above all
in the forty-three years of constantly renewed
effort that our society has made to create for our
industries an army of workers and artists, per-
fectly equipped and always organized for the
struggle against foreign competition. We have
the great pleasure of announcing that our re-
cruiting has been really excellent this year. Our
repeated appeals have found an echo in the homes.
It is thus that the number of our apprenticeship
contracts has notably increased, and that we have
300 children now under the protection of the
society/'
Workers of the independent type, however,
heartily detest this society. They object to its
paternalism and suspect that it is run in the
interest of the manufacturers, who fear unionism
and wish to check the freedom of the workers.
188
THE TRADE IN PARIS
The workers themselves, in 1890, organized an
evening class to supply the training, which they
say is too often neglected in the workroom. The
class was held one evening a week and usually
numbered about 20, the teacher, who was a flower
maker, and her pupils coming direct from their
work. They labored under the usual disadvan-
tages of an evening class. At present it has been
discontinued, but it was significant as voicing their
opinion that the training of workers needs more
attention than it receives at present.
As to the fourth method of training, that given
to children by flower-making parents, its value
must necessarily depend upon the skill of the
parents. The method emphasizes, however, the
element of tradition which is a marked character-
istic of the industry in Paris. The worker brought
up to love the trade, to understand its possibilities,
will have an efficiency far greater than the drifter
who happens to enter a flowef shop because she
has no preference for any other occupation.
"The Parisian succeeds," said one of the French
employers interviewed, "because of her ex-
quisite taste. Taste is the most important
requisite of success. Good taste and patience and
love of the trade — those are the Parisian tradi-
tion." These words are a summary and an ex-
planation of the difference between flower making
in New York and Paris. Unquestionably the
French excel us in the making of a flower and in
love of artistic work in this industry. Nowhere
189
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
is this difference seen more clearly than in the
methods of teaching learners. It is upon this
training of each new generation of workers that
the prosperity of the trade in New York or in
Paris must depend.
190
CHAPTER VIII
THE TRAINING OF FLOWER MAKERS
IN contrast to the various methods of super-
vising apprentices in the artificial flower
trade in Paris, the training of flower makers
in shops in New York is usually of the most hap-
hazard kind, nor do the workers in New York
display that love of their art which is character-
istic of the Parisian flower maker. I n the ma jori ty
of establishments here the learner's career is left
to chance, and no uniformity of method is found
even in the same shop. Only in unusual in-
stances are careful plans carried out. These facts
are well known to employers, but no concerted
action is taken to remedy the situation. "The
trouble with the trade in this country," said one
of them, "is that too many are in it who really
know nothing about it." He had in mind em-
ployers who give more attention to business man-
agement than to workmanship. Yet unlike some
industries in which learners can find no place,
employers in this trade are generally willing to
engage green hands, particularly during the " rush "
seasons, partly because their employment reduces
the labor cost on some of the processes for which
no skill and very little practice is needed. "We
191
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
have to take learners for small cheap work," said
a forewoman. " If we have tubing to cut or small
violets to make, we cannot put a good hand at
them; the cost would be too great. " These girls
can scarcely be called learners, for to do all the
odd jobs in a flower shop which require no experi-
ence will not develop a skilled flower maker.
As methods of teaching vary so, they can best
be described by discussion of certain representa-
tive shops and the workers' reports of their ex-
periences as learners. A large flower and feather
factory on Broadway, for instance, had a work-
room so organized as to assure closer supervision
of learners than we found in any other shop. One
hundred and fifty girls were employed, organized
into groups of three, one experienced flower maker
having charge of two less experienced assistants
who prepared the petals for her. The same girls
learned fancy feather making when the flower
season was over. Learners were paid $3.00 a
week with an increase of 50 cents in two weeks.
The forewoman said that they usually received
$5.00 at the end of the first season and that it was
possible to do fairly good work at the end of the
year, but that it took two years to make an expert.
Occasionally she engaged a girl of fourteen, and
although it was easier to teach one of fourteen, she
preferred girls of sixteen because the factory laws
requiring that children under sixteen must stop
at 5 o'clock, a half hour ahead of the other workers
in the shop, "upset the workroom."
192
A Learner Bringing Lunches to the Workroom
The Processes of Feather Making
THE TRAINING OF FLOWER MAKERS
The piece-work system was not adopted in this
shop, because of the dissatisfaction it occasioned
among the workers. When the styles change, a
girl paid by the piece has difficulty in earning full
wages until she gets used to the new mode, and as
changes are frequent complaints would be many.
It was probably due to the careful system of super-
vision that the automatic "speeding/* which the
piece-work system is said to accomplish, was
found to be unnecessary. Although this group
organization has the appearance of the contract
system which has proved so great an evil in other
trades, it differed from it in the very important
detail that wages were paid not by the head worker
of the group but directly by the firm.
In an interview with Jennie, one of the workers
who had been employed in this shop for two years,
an interesting account was given of the methods
practiced. She repeated from her point of view
the facts previously told us by the forewoman.
She said that the work was carefully planned; that
the experienced flower maker who taught the two
girls was responsible for their work. She was
called their "lady." "When we take our work to
the forewoman she asks us who is our 'lady' and
we tell her. If the work is not right it is she who is
scolded." Jennie's sister worked with her for the
same "lady." As Jennie had been there longer,
however, she did more of the difficult work. Of
late she had been making buds for flower centers,
and crimping chrysanthemum petals and rose
■93
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
leaves, while her sister crimped only the petals of
simple flowers. Their "lady" put the petals to-
gether and branched the flowers. Jennie earned
$3.00 a week when she began. After two years
she was earning $4.50. She hoped soon to be a
"lady." Visited later during the summer she and
her sister both said that they were then working
on feathers. The work was organized in the same
way as it had been for flower making, the two
sisters doing the preparatory processes of stem-
ming, steaming, and pasting.
How rare is the careful organization and method
of teaching of the firm just described is indicated
by the testimony of a number of other Broadway
employers. "I will tell you how it is," said one
of them. "In this country you take a girl to
learn because you want help — you want to get out
the goods. Now when you are paying her $3.00,
and you have a worker teaching her who receives
$15, you naturally have the learner do the odd jobs
like the slipping-up and the crimping that must be
done on the orders you have on hand. When the
girl goes to another place she says she is experi-
enced. They give her a rose to make. Does she
know how? Certainly not. She did not have that
to do for us. Then she loses her job. That's how
we are obliged to teach in this country." A second
employer said that it took two years to learn the
trade thoroughly, but that girls now-a-days were
not taught the whole process. "They learn to be
pasters, preparers, slippers-up, etc. Not one girl
194
THE TRAINING OF FLOWER MAKERS
in io now knows how to paper wires and formerly
learners were always given this work. It pays the
firm better to let a girl do but one thing. Some-
times she will be kept at it a whole season, since
she gets more speed that way." This view was
corroborated by a second employer who said,
"The trouble with the trade at present is that if a
girl is put at crimping at first she is likely to be
kept at that task the whole time she is in business.
It isn't that we don't want to teach her, but we
must fill our orders." This man's method of en-
gaging and discharging learners showed the ruth-
lessness of a system that prevails quite generally
throughout the trade. At the beginning of the
season of 1910 he had taken in a number of new
hands, 20 at one time. At the end of the month
he discharged all but four. He considered this
number a good average, so many are the drifters
among the inexperienced. No system of training
or supervision encourages them to continue, and
the firm plans to get rid of them as soon as its rush
weeks are over.
In a shop where different workers were em-
ployed for different processes the employer ex-
pressed the opinion that such specialization is
inevitable. "It's the American way. A girl who
does one thing all the time does it better and faster
than if she combined them all and made the whole
flower." Girls, on the other hand, complained
bitterly of this method saying that it was monot-
onous and gave them no chance to get ahead.
195
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
They said that the fault lay with the forewomen
who found it inconvenient to teach girls thor-
oughly and so kept them at a single task when once
they had learned it. While this method seemed
as a rule to be acquiesced in by employers because
it was the "American way," nevertheless, some of
them deplored the narrowness of such training
and complained of the difficulty of getting "all
round" workers. Some of them distinctly dis-
agreed with the theory that a high degree of
specialization was profitable. "You get in a cer-
tain order," said one, "and then your girls can't do
the work. They ought to be taught everything.
But we never can do tedious work in this country.
We have to produce fast."
Some girls had had practice in the simple but
unskilled processes of making cheap flowers in
home work, before going into the shop. For ex-
ample, one who had been employed in a shop for
three years had worked at home after school,
Sundays, and holidays, ever since she was a baby.
Her case was in fact a practical illustration of
how little young home workers learn, for it was
not until she went into a shop that she had ever
worked on flowers of a high grade. Consequently
in the workroom she was regarded only as a
learner, although her family had been home work-
ers for the same shop twenty years, and her home
had been a factory ever since she was born. She
had worked in the real factory for a year at $4.00
a week without increase of pay. •
196
THE TRAINING OF FLOWER MAKERS
Notwithstanding the haphazard methods found
to exist in the majority of shops, some women of
marked native ability and interest in their work
do succeed in becoming skilled flower makers.
Probably, however, even these women do not be-
come as skilled as they might under better con-
ditions. On the other hand, many more continue
to be mere automatic repeaters of a part of the
process of flower making, and an even larger num-
ber drift in and out of the trade without acquiring
any skill in it. Their brief and profitless experi-
ence serves only to make them irresponsible
workers in danger of losing the capacity to succeed
in any occupation. Yet all these girls have been
in contact with an industry which might be made
a true art, as we have seen is the case in some shops
in Paris, and which might actually educate its
workers by giving them a thorough fundamental
knowledge of the growth and structure of the
flowers they are copying, as well as the principles
of line and color.
The need for such fundamental knowledge has
been suggested to us more than once by employers
and workers. But in the rush of production for
the millinery industry in New York City, em-
ployers do not yet see the problem as a large one
to be solved by united action. They go no fur-
ther than to complain of the difficulty of securing
competent "hands," and do not plan for the
future by working out any careful system of train-
ing in the workrooms. Even though an associa-
197
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
tion of employers * has been organized it has not
taken up this question in any fundamental way.
That the association regards the problem of
securing experienced workers as fundamental,
however, has been proved by the fact, already
mentioned, that one of their first resolutions pro-
vided for a plan to prevent girls tempted by offers
of higher pay from going from one workroom to
another during the busy season. The same reso-
lution provided for piece work in the workrooms, —
unfortunately an enemy of careful, artistic work.
Individual employers, however, do make an
effort to supply their need for experienced workers
by engaging learners every season. Of the 1 1 3
firms visited who reported on this subject, 100, or
88 per cent, took learners; 13, or 12 per cent, re-
fused to employ them. Of the 100 shops that
took learners, 63 were willing to employ fourteen-
year-old girls, while 33 would engage none under
sixteen. Four made no statement as to the
minimum age. Contrary to the practice in Paris,
firms here pay learners from the first week of
their employment. Table 35 shows the wages
paid to learners in New York.
From 88 of the 100 firms willing to take them,
learners received less than $4.00 a week. The
records of the interviews with these employers
indicated that the sixteen-year-old learner had no
higher pay than the fourteen-year-old. This is
not true in all industries, but in flower making,
* The Association of Flower Manufacturers. See page 56, footnote.
198
THE TRAINING OF FLOWER MAKERS
from the point of view of the value to the firm,
deftness of touch is the important thing, rather
than the superior physical strength of a girl of
sixteen.
TABLE 35. — ARTIFICIAL FLOWER SHOPS EMPLOYING
WOMEN AS LEARNERS, BY WEEKLY
WAGES OF LEARNERS a
Weekly wages
Shops paying learners
the weekly wages
specified
$ i. oo and less than $2.00 ....
$2.00 and less than $3.00
$3.00 and less than $4.00 ....
$4.00 and less than $5.00 ....
$500
2
24
62
7
1
Total
96
a Of 100 firms employing women as learners four could not state
weekly wages, as the learners were put directly at piece work.
It is usually the girl who sits next to a new hand
who teaches her the process. Sometimes this ar-
rangement is systematically planned by the man-
agement, but usually whether a new girl learns
the different processes or not depends upon the
willingness of her neighbor to teach her. Some
flower makers object to doing this because they
believe that there are enough girls already in the
trade. Others who are piece workers complain
that they teach at their own expense, since every
moment lost from their work reduces their earn-
ings. . The influence of the attitude of older
workers toward the learners is quite as important
199
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
as the employer's plans for teaching new recruits.
Furthermore, the interest of the learners them-
selves in their trade, their reasons for choosing it,
and the more indirect influence of their school
careers in developing in them habits of industry
and application, are noteworthy factors in the
problem of industrial education in this trade. In
the workers' statements of their reasons for at-
tempting to learn flower making, the sort of tra-
ditional pride which the Parisian manifests toward
her art is conspicuously lacking. A few comments
chosen at random from the record cards are
illustrative.
A Hungarian woman who had worked four years
in flower shops had made a negative choice, so to
speak, by a process of elimination of other occupa-
tions. Nor was her enthusiasm great for the trade
which she had selected. The investigator who
interviewed her reported that she went into flower
making because she knew that in saleswork the
hours were always long and $7.00 about the maxi-
mum wage. She couldn't stand machine operat-
ing on account of the noise, and didn't care for
dressmaking. She had been watching the news-
papers and had seen a great many advertise-
ments for flower makers. Now that she has tried
it she thinks it is as good as any other trade. It
is better than vest making, for instance, where the
girls have to work with men. Still, she says, many
people think that flower making is not a very
healthy trade. The doctor had told her that she
200
THE TRAINING OF FLOWER MAKERS
must leave it if she became anaemic. It is bad
for the girls if they must work in the same room
where the coloring is done, as often happens in
smaller shops.
Celestine, an Italian girl, had made flowers at
home since the age of ten. The visitor had
chanced to talk with her a short time before she
left school to go to work and Celestine had de-
clared that she would never go into the flower
trade. "That is no trade," she had said. In a
later visit it was found that she had gone to work
in a flower shop, and she was asked how it hap-
pened. She shrugged her shoulders and replied,
"I couldn't do anything else, so I had to make
flowers."
Even more casual was the choice of Anna, a
flower maker of Russian parentage. When she
left school she decided she would like to get
into a department store. So she went up to
Sixth Avenue and asked a policeman where the
different stores were. He pointed them out to
her and she applied as cash girl, salesgirl, stock
girl, and so on, but nobody wanted her. As she
was walking home, down Broadway, she noticed a
sign out for artificial flower makers. She had
heard that girls often worked at this trade. So
she went in and applied for a "situation" and was
told to come the next day.
Not all flower makers have been employed in
that occupation at the beginning of their trade
careers. Many have drifted into it after attempt-
201
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
ing other work. Of the group whom we inter-
viewed, about 60 per cent had found their first
positions in flower factories, and about 10 per
cent in feather making, while the remainder had
been previously employed at candy making,
sewing, work in stores, or the following miscella-
neous occupations: Trimming turnovers, making
ruchings, packing embroidery, packing passe-
menterie, learning to make passementerie, as-
sorting buttons, painting buttons, crocheting
buttons, labeling ribbons, bolting ribbons, learn-
ing machine operating on underwear and children's
dresses, working at millinery, making neckties,
sewing labels on men's clothing, "putting rings on
overalls," working on handkerchiefs, examining
waists, painting pipes, labeling groceries, doing
housework, and working in a bakery.
These were the first positions found after leav-
ing school. How young the workers were is
shown in Table 36, which gives their ages when
they left the class room and went into the factory
to earn a living.
Thus 77, or exactly half, left at the age of four-
teen years, and 145, or more than nine out of
every 10, left before reaching the sixteenth birth-
day.
No systematic effort was made in the investiga-
tion to find out why the girls left school so early,
but the subject was frequently discussed, and the
comments made by some of them in this con-
nection were illuminating. One girl had worked
202
THE TRAINING OF FLOWER MAKERS
in a flower shop in the summer vacation intending
to return to school in the fall. She carried out
this intention for one week, but she found that
her friends had left and when she met them in the
evenings they teased her with questions as to
why she wanted to keep on going to school. So
she went back to the flower shop. Another ex-
pressed great regret to the visitor that she, too,
left because her friends urged her to stop, although
it was not necessary for her to go to work until
a year later. Another had been eager to continue
but she went to work to enable her brothers to get
a professional education, an impossibility without
even the small earnings which she could add to
TABLE 36. — AGE AT LEAVING SCHOOL, OF WOMEN
EMPLOYED IN ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKING*
Age at leaving school
WOMEN EMPLOYED IN
FLOWER MAKING WHO
LEFT SCHOOL AT THE
AGES SPECIFIED
Never attended school
Under 12 years
12 years .
13 years .
14 years .
1 5 years .
16 years .
17 years .
18 years .
Total
a Of 174 women, 20, chiefly women who had attended foreign schools
only, did not supply information.
203
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
her father's wages. In spite of the fact that
flower makers belong to families in which the
struggle to gain a living is very real, the comments
of the workers and their families indicated that
it had not always been extreme economic pressure
which had driven them from school to work at
the age of fourteen. The immediate reason often
repeated was "because my friends left" or "I
was tired of school, and my friends all asked me
why I stayed."
Only in a minority of cases had they stayed in
school long enough to graduate from the ele-
mentary grades. Of 171 who gave information
on this point, one had never attended school, 1 33
reported that the last day school attended was in
New York City (13 in parochial or privately sup-
ported schools and 120 in public schools), while
two had been to school in some other city of the
United States and 35 reported that the last school
attended had been in foreign lands. Of the 120
from New York public schools, 112 reported the
grade reached, and of these nine left before reach-
ing the fifth grade, 12 left while in the fifth grade,
24 the sixth, 38 the seventh, 14 the eighth, 1 1
graduated, and four went to high school but did
not graduate. Thus the proportion who left be-
fore they graduated from the elementary grades
was 87 per cent.
Several facts stand out prominently in these
data regarding the schooling of flower makers, —
the large proportion who leave school at the age
204
THE TRAINING OF FLOWER MAKERS
of fourteen, the failure to graduate even from
elementary school, and the trivial reasons for
leaving. The fact that so many of the flower
makers receive their final school training in the
public schools throws on these schools some of the
responsibility for conditions in this trade and
gives them an opportunity for influence. How
they are to meet this responsibility is a large
question. Conditions in the flower trade show
the need for skilled workers able to do a high
grade of work. Facts about the age at which
flower makers leave school suggest that their
capacity for skill would be greater if their child-
hood could be prolonged by staying in school until
they were older. Whether the day schools or the
evening schools might exert a more direct influ-
ence by organizing classes for training flower
makers was one of the most important questions
discussed in the course of this investigation.
Such facts as those already described in con-
nection with the training of flower makers are
more or less typical of conditions in other trades
today. The situation has aroused many persons
to advocate the establishment of trade classes in
public schools to perform the task now so sadly
neglected in the workrooms, and to give the
training an educational value, which it is com-
monly supposed it never could have under shop
conditions alone. In all our interviews with em-
ployers and workers we made careful inquiry about
their opinions concerning the desirability of estab-
205
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
lishing such classes either in day or evening schools.
Their comments are a summary of the many prac-
tical difficulties that now confront the advocates
of industrial education. Roughly these comments
divided themselves into two groups, — those con-
cerned specifically with the desirability of training
girls for the artificial flower trade, and those
concerned with the desirability of the trade
school method in general. The employers' at-
titude may be defined by the following classi-
fications :
In favor of trade classes 52
Opposed to trade classes 22
Indifferent 27
Doubtful of its success 10
Opinion not given 3
Total 1 14
Less than half favored trade classes, while 22
were opposed, and 27 were indifferent. Ten were
doubtful of the success of such a plan. Their
opinions threw light not merely upon the value of
trade classes and their practicability, but also
upon many conditions in the industry which affect
the training of learners. Wages, methods of
organizing the work, seasons, nationality and
age of the worker, and the home-work system, —
all these are factors in the problem of develop-
ing efficient workers. Favorable comments are
quoted first.
The owner of one of the best flower shops in
206
THE TRAINING OF FLOWER MAKERS
New York was enthusiastic over the possibility of
a class for training workers. He believed that
the flower trade had a future in America and saw
no reason why we should not be able to produce
flowers as fine as the imported models. Moreover,
he thought that to take a girl from one of the
machine trades, which are known to be over-
crowded, and put her into the flower trade would
also benefit the girls in the machine trades by
lessening the number in their ranks. Another
owner of a shop who was much interested in the
idea of a class, said that it would be very
desirable for the employer. He pointed out
how wasteful is the present system of learning,
as only about two girls out of every 12 " learn-
ers' ' become flower makers. Their ideals of good
workmanship too would be stimulated. "Now-
a-days girls always ask first, 'How much do
you pay?' not 'How much will I progress?'"
He thought, however, that two serious difficulties
before such a class would be to dispose of the
product, and to pay the cost of the materials
which he estimated as $4.00 or $5 .00 for every $ 1 .00
spent on labor.
In a shop where 75 girls were employed, both
the forewoman and a member of the firm greeted
the idea of a class with enthusiasm. Neverthe-
less, their statement of the case might be regarded
by true educators as an argument against such a
plan. " If the schools could get the girls started,"
they said, "as you get a machine well oiled-up and
207
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
set going, it would be a fine thing for us." To
feed industry with ready-made workers is not,
however, the aim of those interested in industrial
education. This employer gave further evidence
that his idea was not to develop really artistic
work but merely to supply market demands as
they now exist, without making any effort to
change them. In answer to the suggestion that
pupils in a flower makers' class ought to use real
flowers as models, he replied, "It would not be
worth while. If you want the really artistic flow-
ers you must send to France. There a girl works
six or eight hours on one flower, but here we must
get out the orders quickly. We cannot change
the market. The people who buy from us want
cheap flowers, so we make them."
" It's a poor trade," said another. "We have to
follow the methods of our competitors, and the
result is that we can hardly pay these girls a living
wage. It takes a girl two years to learn it and
during that time she works for about $4.00 a week.
Time was when we made as good a flower as
Germany. Now we can't compete even with
Germany. All the cheap and mediocre flowers
come from there. The artistic work comes from
Paris; labor is cheap there. But it isn't only com-
petition from the other side, and it isn't bad times
here, — it's the fashion. If women wanted flowers
they'd have them, hard times or no hard times,
but some seasons they don't want them."
Aside from doubt of the practicability of a trade
208
»• • • • '
Making Willow Plumes
• 1 1
1
k&* ml
SS3H Hfe*. . ..31 ^^k\V\u
■k
Rose Making and Branching
.«« •-••*
THE TRAINING OF FLOWER MAKERS
class, employers who expressed unfavorable views
often based their opinion on bad conditions in the
trade. "It is not a staple product/' said one,
"and the wages are low. It is a trade where
ignorant girls can be used. It is not the place for
those who are ambitious. I would rather see a
girl drift into any occupation but flower making.
The seasons do not last more than four months
now-a-days." Others pointed out the same ob-
jections; namely, that the styles change often,
that the sale of flowers fluctuates too violent-
ly to predict the prosperity of the industry from
season to season; that the demand in the trade is
for cheap labor and, therefore, young girls are
needed ; and that the wages ahead for experienced
workers are too low to make it worth while to
train them in a school.
Of the practicability of such a class many
doubts were expressed. These were centered
about the difficulties involved in securing equip-
ment; having starchers, dyers, and cutters to pre-
pare the material for the pupils' work; disposing
of the product afterward; and obtaining practical
and competent teachers. To supply the right
materials to work with in sufficient variety for
thorough practice would be a heavy expense.
Furthermore, if the teaching were not funda-
mental and practical it would not be successful.
As an example, one employer referred to a flower
maker in his workroom who had been trained in
an evening class. "She is a good worker now,"
209
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
he said, "but they did not teach her in a practical
way. They taught her to make clover blossoms,
but clover blossoms are imported so cheaply that
it does not pay to make them here. They taught
her how to crimp poppy petals, but this crimping
can be done by machinery in the shop." He
added, however, that a school could teach certain
fundamental principles of flower making. To
curl rose petals is not only good practice in rose
making but a means of acquiring the deftness
needed in many other processes of the trade. To
know something of botany, and to learn the con-
struction and growth of a flower, is to become the
sort of intelligent worker greatly needed now in the
industry. This demand for general intelligence as
an essential equipment was voiced by the efficient
manager of the flower department of a very large
wholesale millinery establishment. He opposed a
trade class for training flower makers for the same
reason that he opposed vocational courses in high
schools, — because he was skeptical of the effi-
ciency of either school or college courses which
aim to serve as substitutes for practical industrial
or business experience. "It is better," he said,
"to give the good, old-fashioned general edu-
cation."
The fundamental objection to the organization
of flower makers' classes in New York public
schools today is not, however, the impracticability
of the plan, but the possible effect of such classes
on conditions in the trade, and the undesirability of
210
THE TRAINING OF FLOWER MAKERS
training girls for an industry which does not yet
insure the wellbeing of all its employes. Lack of
skill in the worker is not the only obstacle to the
prosperity and happiness of wage-earners, and a
preliminary training in deftness and in knowledge
of trade processes will not remove all, or even a
goodly proportion, of the industrial evils which
now oppress the workers. If the schools, for ex-
ample, give a number of girls a thorough practice
in the initial mysteries of artificial flower making,
will wages increase, seasons lengthen, and home
work disappear? Or will the employers, finding
a supply of trained workers knocking at their
doors each year, feel less and less the necessity
for giving steady work even to a few of the best
hands? Will the workers be better able to bar-
gain for just wages, or will they be told that if
they ask too much they can leave and other girls
from the trade school will take their places? Will
the causes of home work be removed or its evils
lessened by a trade class?
Those employers who opposed the idea of train-
ing flower makers in public schools on the ground
that conditions in the trade did not justify it, were
voicing one of the most serious obstacles to the
development of industrial education. For low^
wages, short seasons, cheap work, haphazard
methods of training, long hours, and an extensive
home-work system all directly prevent the develop-
ment of efficient workers. The responsibility of
the school for solving educational problems grow-
211
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
ing out of tremendous changes in social and eco-
nomic conditions cannot be denied, but a direct
effort on their part to train workers for a trade
like flower making would be of doubtful wisdom.
True efficiency cannot be secured by the schools
alone unless the conditions in the industry be so
changed that they shall develop rather than re-
press the capacity of the workers._y
212
CHAPTER IX
SUMMARY
TO readers of magazines and newspapers, who
have become familiar with accounts of
child laborers in tenements, the mere men-
tion of the artificial flower trade recalls a picture of
a three-year-old toiler picking apart the petals to
be pasted together in the shape of a violet or a
rose. Thus, paradoxical as it may seem, artificial
flowers have become the very symbol of a method
of nullifying the law, outwitting the reformers, and
exploiting childhood in the midst of a city in
which public opinion has expressed itself in no un-
certain terms against the employment of children
in any wage-earning occupation. But the blight
of the home-work system falls not only upon the
workers. The exploitation of the unskilled,
whether they be children or their mothers and
grandmothers, means bad workmanship, and bad
workmanship will inevitably undermine the pros-
perity of the industry. It would be a pity to de-
stroy an occupation capable at its best of attracting
so artistic and cultivated a worker as Mme. A,
the Frenchwoman whose exquisite copy of a moss
rose fresh from the garden has been described as
typical of the most eificient Parisian workmanship.
213
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
The chief problem of the flower trade, then, is
how to raise the standards of workmanship. The
trade, however, is not a machine industry in
which the development of new mechanical devices
is the chief factor in production. The work is
hand work, and we have learned from France that
the beauty of a flower is created by a subtle
deftness of touch, gained only by long practice.
Thus the future of the trade depends not upon
mechanical equipment but upon the skill of the
workers. For the sake of the future of their trade
artificial flower manufacturers of New York
greatly need an efficiency engineer, with an artist's
training, to set in order their house of industry.
In order to raise the standard of workmanship,
labor conditions must be improved. Certain ex-
ternal facts about the industry must be passed in
review to give a picture of labor conditions. Al-
though flower making is a handicraft, the craftsman
who sells her product direct to retail customers is as
rare a figure as in any industry which has been re-
volutionized by the introduction of machinery.
Flower manufacturers sell not at retail, but at
wholesale to milliners, and it is this wholesale pro-
duction which has led to the use of the factory
system with sub-division of labor, piece work,
contractors, and the sweating system.
In the United States the flower and feather
trade has become essentially a city industry, three-
fourths of it concentrated in New York City, and
by far the greater number of New York workers
214
SUMMARY
and firms congested in a small district on the
lower west side near the salesrooms and factories
of wholesale milliners. Moreover, since flower
making is a subsidiary industry, dependent for its
existence upon the amount and type of personal
decoration that fashion may decree or money
permit, it is one of the first to feel a change of mode,
financial depression or abnormal seasonal con-
ditions. When the country is prosperous, the
weather good, and large or medium-sized flowers
are in vogue, artificial flower makers will have a
good season. If very small flowers are preferred,
forget-me-nots or lilacs, imports from Germany
will increase and fewer workers will be employed
in New York flower factories. If the weather is
cold at the time of the spring "openings, " or warm
when the autumn models are first displayed, the
whole trade will be depressed. When hard times
come, women will forego the luxury of having
extra hats. Finally, to cap the climax of un-
certainty, just as the manufacturers are reveling in
signs of the popularity of flowers, some manipula-
tor of fashions will succeed in catching the popular
fancy with a new device of feathers or ribbons and
for the remainder of the season these will be the
only conceivable trimming for the hats of the
fashionable.
To the large shop equipped to manufacture
feathers and millinery supplies as well as flowers,
these uncertainties may cause only considerable
inconvenience; but to the small owners, who are in
215
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
the majority in this industry, they frequently mean
failure. The worker, whether she be employed in
a large workroom or a small one, may find herself
suddenly out of work at a time which she expected
to be the height of the season. Those who suffer
least are the women who have learned also to make
feathers and who are employed in establishments
with several departments.
The frequent failures of small firms and the sud-
den reductions in the force at the end of each sea-
son in both large and small establishments, result
in revolutionary changes in the personnel of the
workers. Such variations mean that the workers
will have no standards of production in common,
since they are for the most part newcomers in the
workrooms, without a traditional love of flower
making or constant practice in the art. More-
over, in New York City, the trades in which con-
ditions are most variable reflect most quickly
changes in immigration. Occupations in which
three-fourths of the positions are filled anew each
season will attract those whose foothold in in-
dustry is least sure, — foreign-born adults and the
children of foreigners, young workers fresh from
school whose prospective wages seem so important
to their families that they must take the first
possible job, and married women bidding des-
perately for a chance to supplement a meager
family income through work at home. Em-
ployers constantly complain that their workers
"care more about an extra dollar than about a
216
SUMMARY
chance to learn the trade. " They say that a girl
who has learned but one process will give up a
chance to learn more in order to make higher
wages in some other factory where her specializa-
tion will be more valuable, even though her future
as a skilled flower maker may be jeopardized. Em-
ployers who complain of this condition might find
it explained by the fact that an unstable occupa-
tion must always utilize the labor of workers
economically the least stable. These will not be
likely to develop the highest type of efficiency.
The effect of the seasons on the personnel of the
workroom force was voiced by the employer who
said, "There are plenty of girls in the trade if the
work could be spread over the whole year, but the
trouble is that too many are wanted at one time
for only a short period. "
Not only do these conditions prevent the organ-
ization of a permanent force in the trade, but the
rewards of experience are too small to balance the
uncertainties of the occupation. Figures copied
from payrolls of flower factories in the United
States by the census enumerators in a busy week
of the year revealed the fact that at the height
of the season only about one woman in sixteen
(6.7 per cent) received as much as $12 or over,
while twice as many (13.3 per cent) earned less
than $3. The average wage of all workers, exclud-
ing forewomen, interviewed by us was $6. 37 a week.
The average for those who were eighteen years of
age or over, including forewomen, was only $8.28.
217
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
We have seen, too, that chance seems to con-
trol the wage scale. Processes vary and piece-
work earnings must be readjusted with each
change in the product. The workers, unstable as
they are likely to be and heterogeneous in nation-
ality, have never succeeded in organizing a trade
union to compel forewomen or employers to con-
sider their interests in the wage bargain. Further-
more, for every worker in the shop at least one
woman or child is working at home, members of a
scattered industrial group without the least sense
of common interests or power to ask for higher
pay. All these uncertain elements influence wages
and prevent the establishment of a standard.
Until wage standards of some kind are recognized,
personal efficiency will not be properly rewarded.
Until conditions in the trade are so changed that
adequate payment will be made for work well done,
skill will be increasingly rare.
No single element is producing chaos in the
wage scale so disastrously as the home-work
system. It is the greatest enemy of artistic
work. As an industrial method it stands con-
demned not only because it thrives through
exploitation of the very poor, but because it repre-
sents the most extreme form of unscientific man-
agement, which if unchecked may eventually ruin
and even "kill" the industry. Take an illustra-
tion from an allied trade. In 1910 feather manu-
facturers were making and selling willow plumes
at a high price. Suddenly some small employers
218
SUMMARY
began offering them at a third the usual price,
being able to do so because they had transformed
willow-plume making into a tenement industry
with no standard of wages, exploiting little chil-
dren in the families of the poorest Italians. The
manufacturers who had been selling the products
of their own workrooms gave up making willow
plumes, and bought them from the small em-
ployers who had become the parasites of the
tenements. " I went every day in my automobile
to the home-work district to buy/' said one em-
ployer, his experience still vivid in his mind. " I
saw sights worse than any described to the Factory
Investigating Commission/'* The result was to
make willow plumes so numerous, so common, so
cheap, and the wearing of them so abhorrent to
right-minded people, that less than three years
later their manufacture in New York tenements
was practically an extinct occupation. In addition
to the disastrous effect upon famjly life and health,
home work depresses the wage scale, shortens the
seasons by swelling the volume of production, and
lowers the standards of American workmanship by
flooding the market with cheap and badly made
products.
Thorough study of conditions of the trade in
Paris, where flower makers unquestionably, as
yet, excel us in artistic spirit and craftsmanlike
* Conditions of tenement work were revealed in testimony before
the Factory Investigating Commission of New York State, in public
hearings held in New York City in December, 1912.
219
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
work, would no doubt throw much light on the in-
dustry in this country. Even though the facts
which we have secured about the trade in France
are illustrative rather than conclusive, they are il-
luminating. The home worker there has usually
received a thorough training in the factory, and
the work she does is highly skilled. Her children
do not help her; they are not skilled enough. In
the factories employers have given much attention
to training learners, and in those of the better
grades the seasons are long enough to prevent con-
stant loss of workers. In Paris as in New York
large numbers of girls are paid less than a living
wage in this as in other trades. Nevertheless, the
trade in Paris ranks among the better paid occu-
pations open to women, while in New York the pro-
portion of low paid workers is large in flower making
as compared with all industries considered together.
Even in Paris, however, the industry is changing,
the factory system is being extended, inartistic
work is not uncommon, the contractor is an im-
portant figure, the seasons are less steady and the
necessity for learning both flower making and
feather making seems to be increasingly felt. Yet
the distinctive features of the Paris flower trade
are its artistic possibilities, the workers' choice of
it as a life craft, their pride in creating a beautiful
object, and, most of all, their traditional love of
good workmanship. The French flowers sold by
New York milliners tell the story of the skill of their
makers. Some beautiful flowers are made in New
220
SUMMARY
York, and skilled workers are found in the trade;
but we cannot rival France unless the whole at-
mosphere of the industry is changed, unless a new
spirit of joy in workmanship enters in; and,
more fundamental still, unless the standards of
labor conditions are so changed as to make pos-
sible permanence in the workroom force, suitable
rewards for expert work, and the thorough training
of learners.*
The problem, however, is by no means hopeless.
We cannot take the trade apart like a house of
cards and rebuild it in an hour. An industry is an
organism whose development is vital and not
mechanical. But much depends on nurture and
environment, and the American people are just
beginning to recognize the possibility of legisla-
tive action which shall strengthen the growth of a
trade under conditions favorable to the best in-
terests of all who are engaged in it. The estab-
lishment of minimum standards below which no
single manufacturer may fall to the detriment of
his fellow manufacturers, serves to re-enforce the
* These requirements illustrate the problem which advocates
of new methods of industrial education must face. A higher grade
of skill is needed, and this can be developed in flower making more
easily than in machine industries, because quality has not given
place to quantity as the inevitable test of skill, and efficiency still de-
pends more upon intelligence than upon mechanical speed. France
excels us in a way to stir our pride to achievement. Is the time, then,
ripe for co-operation between the public schools and the trade? A
public school official in New York who read this report decided that
it was not. His reasons were that the pay was too inadequate,
standards of workmanship were too low, and home workers too
numerous. The schools can accomplish little in co-cperation with
any trade until within the trade itself there is a demand for efficiency
and a disposition to pay for it.
221
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
efforts of the best worker? and employers within
the industry. The growth of legislation, however,
should be as vital and organic as the growth of a
trade. It must be based on knowledge of con-
ditions, it must be uncontrolled by special in-
terests, and it must be vigorously and fearlessly
enforced.
Prohibition of the employment in factories of
children under sixteen would relieve the artificial
flower trade of its undue proportion of young
workers. The strict enforcement of the law regu-
lating the hours of work of women would protect
them against excessive fatigue during the busy
season. But neither child labor laws nor legis-
lation limiting the hours of work of women which
apply only in factories will suffice to secure proper
conditions in the flower trade, so long as the home-
work system makes possible the employment of
babies at home, and prolongs the hours of labor for
factory hands when the day's work in the factory
is over. In this trade the first line of attack to
improve conditions in the factories must un-
doubtedly be against the home-work system.
Opinions, however, differ as to the most effective
method of attack. The newest suggestion is the
establishment by law of a minimum wage board
for the trade, containing representatives of em-
ployers, workers, and the general public. The
purpose of such a board would be to introduce the
machinery of collective bargaining with reference
to the minimum wage rates to prevail in the in-
222
SUMMARY
dustry. If established by law, the recommenda-
tions of the board would become legally binding on
all employers in the trade. Advocates of this plan
believe that to require the payment of a fair mini-
mum rate would result in limiting home work, since
home work thrives through under-payment.
Others who have studied the home-work system
believe that it should be attacked more directly by
a law absolutely prohibiting any manufacture in
tenement homes. They argue that the evils of
this system — unlimited hours, the employment of
children, and the forcing down of wages — are due
to the fact that the work is done in homes where
the workers are isolated and where the conditions
of their employment cannot be supervised. Reg-
ulation of such conditions is impossible. The ex-
perience of New York illustrates the difficulty of
attempting it. A few employers, especially in the
larger establishments, have expressed themselves
as in favor of absolute prohibition of flower man-
ufacture in tenement homes because it would re-
lieve them of the competition of the small firms
which thrive through the home-work system.
But such a prohibition would do more than re-
lieve these employers of competition. It would
make possible a better product, and this would in-
crease the demand for good workmanship and thus
improve labor conditions.
A trade like artificial flower making, the product
of which is a luxury and not a necessity, is one in
which such legislative experiments may well be
223
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
tried, especially when the. facts show so convinc-
ingly that the welfare of workers and the future
prosperity of the industry are bound together.
With so much of the trade centered in New York,
it is within the power of the state legislature
to take action which should determine the future
destiny of the whole industry in this country.
224
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A
RECORD CARDS USED IN THE
INVESTIGATION
i. Worker's Record.
i a. Worker's Record (Reverse).
2. Worker's Report of Artificial Flower Factory.
2a. Notes on 2.
3. Investigator's Report of Artificial Flower
Factory.
3a. Notes on 3.
4. Record of Family of Home Workers.
4a. Notes on 4.
The numerals in parentheses on the face of each
card refer to corresponding notes on the back of
the card.
Names and addresses have been changed in
these records.
227
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235
APPENDIX B
OPINION OF THE SUPREME COURT
OF NEW YORK ON THE FIFTY-
FOUR HOUR LAW
Supreme Court — Special Term, Kings
County. January, 191 3.
The People of the State of New York ex rel. William
Hoelderlin, relator, v. Thomas Kane, as Warden of
the City Prison of the Borough of Brooklyn, City of New
York, respondent.
The provision of section 77 of the Labor Law, as amended
in 191 2, limiting the hours of labor of minors and women
in factories other than canning establishments to nine
hours a day and fifty-four hours a week is not invalid,
either as to minors or to women over the age of twenty-
cne years, because interfering with the constitutional
guaranty of liberty. Minors of both sexes are wards of
the State and a distinction may legitimately be drawn
under the police power as to permissible hours of labor
between adult women and adult men.
The exemption from the general operation of this statutory
provision of contracts for labor in canning factories from
the 1 5th day of June to the 1 5th day of October does not
deny the equal protection of the law.
Alfred J. Talley (Denis R. O'Brien of counsel) for relator;
James C. Cropsey, district attorney (Hersey Egginton, assis-
tant district attorney, of counsel), for respondent.
Blackmar, J. — This is a proceeding on habeas corpus said
to be brought to test the constitutionality of the law limiting
236
FIFTY-FOUR HOUR LAW
the hours of labor of minors and women in factories other than
canning establishments to nine hours a day and fifty-four
hours a week. The respondent returns that he holds the
relator under three commitments for the violation of section
77 of the Labor Law; one for employing a male minor under
the age of 1 8 years more than fifty-four hours a week; another
for employing a female minor under the age of 21 years more
than fifty-four hours a week, and another for employing a
female over the age of 21 years more than fifty-four hours a
week. The return was traversed, alleging the unconstitu-
tionality of section 77 of the Labor Law, as amended in 1 9 1 2,
and the district attorney, appearing for the defendant, de-
murred to the traverse.
The case might be summarily disposed of on the ground
that, whatever may be said regarding the validity of the law
limiting the hours of labor of adult women, it was competent
beyond question for the Legislature to prescribe such limita-
tions in the case of minors, who are wards of the State, and
that such provisions of the law are plainly severable. I shall
not, however, place my decision on that ground, but shall
consider the very question argued orally and in briefs, viz.:
Whether it is constitutional for the Legislature to make it a
crime to employ an adult female to work in a candy factory
more than fifty-four hours in a week.
It is claimed, first, that the constitutional guarantee of
"liberty" is violated in that the law in question abridges the
right of both employer and employee to contract for labor,
and, second, that the exemption of contracts for labor in
canning factories during the summer season violates the prin-
ciple that laws must be uniform in their application and
the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United
States Constitution forbidding any State to deny to any
person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
law.
I propose to rest this case on the authority of reported
decisions of the courts, with a few prefatory remarks as to
their relative value.
Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the
United States Constitution each State decided for itself the
question of the limitation of the police power. It was a ques-
237
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
tion of the domestic policy of the several States and the
decisions of their tribunals upon it were final. Since the
adoption of the amendment the liberty of the individual is
protected by the United States Constitution against action
by the States. All judicial questions of the power of the
several States to restrain liberty by the exercise of the police
power are thus finally brought to the arbitrament of the
United States Supreme Court. On this class of questions
that is the court of last resort and its decisions are the supreme
authority. Since the enactment of that amendment the
courts of all the States, with reference to the rights therein
secured to individuals, have become courts of co-ordinate
jurisdiction. Whether the decision comes from Maine or
Oregon, from Minnesota or Louisiana, if it sustains a statute
of the State limiting liberty in the exercise of the police
power, it is subject to review by the Supreme Court. The
courts of all the States are working together with equal
powers in this field of law. The decisions of the United
States Supreme Court upon the police power are therefore
controlling, and those of the courts of sister States may no
longer be regarded as decisions of foreign tribunals; but they
are entitled to that degree of deference which is yielded to
courts of equal authority administering not similar laws, but
the same law.
Bearing this principle in mind I proceed to an examination
of the authorities. Muller v. Oregon (208 U. S., 412) decided
that an act of the Legislature of Oregon prohibiting the em-
ployment of females in any mechanical establishment or fac-
tory or laundry more than ten hours during any day is not
unconstitutional so far as respects laundries. The case differs
from the one at bar, for in this case the employment was not
in a laundry, but in a candy factory, and the legal limit is
not ten hours a day, but nine hours a day and fifty-four hours
a week. That case, however, decides the fundamental propo-
sition that for the purpose of the application of a law under
the police power the Legislature may establish a class com-
posed of women alone, and may limit the hours of labor of
the individuals composing that class.
In State v. Somerville (Washington, 122 Pac. Rep., 324,
decided in March, 1912) a law limiting the hours of labor of
238
FIFTY-FOUR HOUR LAW
women to eight hours a day was held constitutional as applied
to paper box manufactories.
In Commonwealth v. Riley (210 Mass., 387), decided
January I, 1912, an act limiting the hours during which
women may be employed in manufacturing and mechanical
establishments to fifty-six hours in one week and ten hours
in one day was upheld.
In Ritchie & Co. v. Wayman (244 111., 509), decided April
21, 19 10, the courts of Illinois upheld legislation forbidding
the employment of females in any mechanical establishment,
factory or laundry more than ten hours a day.
In Withey v. Bloem (163 Mich., 419) a law prohibiting the
employment of women in factories more than ten hours a
day and fifty-four hours a week was held not violative of the
United States Constitution.
For other cases in which like legislation has been held to
be constitutional see Wenham v. State of Nebraska (65
Nebraska, 394), Commonwealth v. Beatty (15 Pa. Sup. Ct.
Rep., 5), Commonwealth v. Hamilton Mfg. Co. (120 Mass.,
383)«
I find practically nothing against all this weight of author-
ity. Ritchie v. People (155 Illinois, 98) has been distin-
guished to the point of being overruled by the later case of
Ritchie & Co. v. Wayman (244 Illinois, 509). Matter of
Maguire (57 California, 604) was a case of the employment
of a woman in a bar-room, and a statute prohibiting it was
declared unconstitutional as violating section 18, article 20,
of the California Constitution, which provided that "no per-
son shall on account of sex be disqualified from entering upon
or pursuing any lawful business, vocation or profession."
This case obviously is no authority for the relator. Burcher
v. People (41 Colorado, 495) was also decided upon the
peculiar wording of the Constitution of Colorado.
The relator appeals to Lochner v. New York (198 U. S.,
45). This is the famous bakeshop case. It holds that the
State of New York cannot limit the hours of employees in
bakeries to ten hours a day without infringing the liberty of
the individual to contract for his labor guaranteed by the
Fourteenth Amendment. The case is exceedingly interest-
ing. It arose in the County Court of Oneida County, in this
239
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
State, and progressed through the Appellate Division of the
Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals and the United States
Supreme Court. Twenty-two judges participated in the sev-
eral decisions. The only unanimous decision was by the
County Court, where there was but one judge. I n the Appel-
late Division the justices divided three to two; in the Court
of Appeals, four to three, and in the United States Supreme
Court, five to four. There were nine separate opinions
written. Of the twenty-two judges twelve were of the
opinion that the law was constitutional and ten that it was
not. The opinion of the minority prevailed because five of
the ten judges who thought the law unconstitutional were
members of the court of last resort. What does this remark-
able divergence of opinion suggest? I do not find in the nine
opinions any reason for thinking that there were any differences
as to the rules of law governing the case. The power of the
State to enact laws for the welfare of the people, notwith-
standing the constitutional guarantee of the liberty of the
individual, was not questioned. The difficulty was in deter-
mining whether the law in question was in furtherance of
public welfare. The courts were approaching a question of
political economy. So Judge Edward T. Bartlett, of the
Court of Appeals, speaks of a "coming day when the Legis-
lature, in the full panoply of paternalism," &c. Justice Peck-
ham, of the United States Supreme Court, says "statutes of
the nature of that under review, limiting the hours in which
grown and intelligent men may labor to earn their living, are
mere meddlesome interferences with the rights of the indi-
vidual"; and Justice Holmes says "this case is decided upon
an economic theory which a large part of the country does
not entertain," and again "but a constitution is not intended
to embody a particular economic theory, whether of pater-
nalism or the organic relation of the citizen to the State or
of laissez faire." The fact that economic theories entertained
by the judges influence their decisions as to the limits of the
police power should not be excluded from the mind while
studying the subject. Neither can such decisions be regarded
as landmarks permanently defining such limits. Laws which
may be meddlesome interferences with the liberty of the indi-
vidual in a primitive state may, in a highly organized society,
240
FIFTY-FOUR HOUR LAW
become essential to public welfare or even to the continuance
of civil liberty itself. The pace at which courts move in sym-
pathy with fast developing economic ideas may be illustrated
by Lochner v. New York, the hesitating utterances of divided
courts in 1905, followed by Muller v. Oregon, the confident
pronouncement of a united bench in 1908. Whatever may
be said of Lochner v. New York, it is so distinguished by the
later case of Muller v. Oregon that it is no authority for the
relator in the case at bar.
Neither does People v. Williams (189 N. Y., 131) sustain
the relator's claim. That case decided only that it was not
competent for the Legislature to prohibit a woman from work-
ing in a factory before 6 in the morning and after 9 o'clock
at night. The act had no relation to the number of hours
of labor. To work a half hour or less in a factory before or
after the forbidden hours violated the law, even if that were
the extent of the whole day's work. The case is decided
largely on the authority of Lochner v. New York, and Muller
v. Oregon forbids our drawing therefrom any general rule that
labor legislation for women alone is unconstitutional. The
remark therein made that women are not wards of the State
is unquestionably correct. This wardship depends on pre-
sumed (in the case of infants) or proved (in the case of
lunatics) mental incompetency. No one claims that the dif-
ferentiation of women from men, as subjects of legislation,
depends on mental conditions. The justification for legisla-
tion special to women rests, as is said by Justice Brewer in
Muller v. Oregon, on the fact of common knowledge that
women's physical structure and the performance of maternal
functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for exist-
ence. The element of invalidity in the statute under con-
sideration which was developed in People v. Williams is
plainly severable.
The authority upon the question seems complete. The
power of the Legislature to create a class, consisting of women
only and limit their hours of labor is established in Muller
v. Oregon. That the limitation may be to fifty-four hours
a week is decided by State v. Somerville and Withey v. Bloem,
and in these two cases the regulation was held valid as applied
to the manufacture of paper boxes and seals for locking freight
241
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
cars, occupations apparently as light and innocuous as candy
making.
But the relator claims that the exemption of the work in
canning factories from the 1 5th of June to the 1 5th of October
renders the law unconstitutional. A law is a rule of conduct.
It must apply alike to all under like conditions. Nor can any
State deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the law. A law, therefore, cannot make an act
criminal as to one person which is innocent in another under
like circumstances and conditions. But as circumstances and
conditions differ, classification of those subject to the law may,
and often must, be made for the purpose of securing that
very uniformity which is essential to law. The precise ques-
tion in this case is whether the Legislature may, for the pur-
pose of regulating the hours of labor therein, establish a class
consisting of factories, as defined by the law of New York,
except canning factories. This depends on whether there is
a difference in conditions which warrants the classification.
Resorting to authority, we find that this very question has
been decided in State v. Somerville (Washington, 122 Pac.
Rep., 324), and in Withey v. Bloem (163 Michigan, 419) and
in Mt. Vernon, &c, Co. v. Frankfort, &c, Co. (Maryland, 75
Atl. Rep., 1 05). These are all cases in which canning factories
have been exempted from the operation of laws fixing the
hours of labor for women and children in manufacturing estab-
lishments.
The relator has presented to me a record of evidence taken
this year before a committee of the Senate of the State of New
York. It is claimed that this record shows that conditions
in canning establishments are more injurious to the health
of women and children than in many other factories, for
instance, than the candy factories. But this is a subject
upon which the court cannot take evidence. Classification
for the purpose of confining the operation of laws is a legis-
lative function. Every statute presupposes a finding by the
Legislature of the facts necessary to bring the act within its
powers. In ascertaining these facts, the Legislature is not
limited to the narrow field of legal evidence. It may draw
its information from any source open to mankind. If the
courts may review this finding of the Legislature, with the
242
FIFTY-FOUR HOUR LAW
aid of such limited means of knowledge as legal evidence
affords, an act might be held constitutional in one case and
otherwise in another, dependent upon the industry with
which the evidence was collected and the skill with which it
was presented. In State v. Somerville (supra) evidence was
offered that the work was light and harmless, and the court
held it irrelevant, saying: "Courts in passing upon the rea-
sonableness or unreasonableness of a statute, and deciding
whether the Legislature has exceeded its powers to such an
extent as to render the act invalid, must look at the terms
of the act itself, and bring to their assistance such scientific,
economic, physical and other pertinent facts as are common
knowledge, and of which they can take judicial notice," and
again, "in all cases pertaining to the police power the Legis-
lature is supreme, unless the general application of the law
does violence to the common knowledge of men, in which
event a court might properly intervene." What matter of
common knowledge instructs me that conditions in canning
factories require the limitation of the hours of women therein
in the same measure as in other factories? They may or may
not. I do not know. Neither can I take evidence on the
subject. I may read the act and bring to my assistance
matters of common knowledge, such as a court may take cog-
nizance of without evidence, and unless it thereby appears
that there is no reasonable basis for the exception, I must
trust to the wisdom of the Legislature and uphold the act.
The information received by the court in Muller v. Oregon
(see 208 U. S., p. 419), such as the statutes of other States
and foreign nations, reports of committees, bureaus and com-
missions, proceedings of medical societies, and matters of that
kind, are legitimate means of ascertaining what are matters
of common knowledge. Such things I may receive, but not
evidence of conditions in certain canning factories such as is
offered in this case. If the inquiry now in progress shows
that the exception of canning factories is not justified, we
may presume that the law will be corrected by the Legisla-
ture. But irrespective of conditions in these factories, it is
for the Legislature to determine whether the interest of the
public in preserving perishable fruits is more important than
the health of female and minor employees. However loath
243
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
the courts might be to acquiesce in the wisdom or humanity
of such a decision, yet it is a matter of legislative and not
judicial cognizance.
I have not thought it necessary to decide the interesting
question presented by the district attorney whether an excep-
tion introduced into an existing law could have the effect of
invalidating the law.
The relator appeals to the court in the name of liberty.
He claims that liberty is protected by the constitution, which
was enacted by the people themselves, and that none but the
people, not even their agent, the Legislature, has dispensing
power over it. He claims that the constitution itself, in
Article XIII, section i, requires that every judge before
entering upon the duties of his office shall take an oath to
support the Constitution of the United States and the Con-
stitution of the State of New York, and that this means to
support them even against the acts of the Legislature. In
all this he is right. Such is the law, and such is the duty of
all courts. What is the constitutional liberty which every
judge is to protect? It is civil or political liberty. Man in
a state of nature, as the nineteenth century philosophers were
wont to say, has an inherent right, as a free moral agent, to
act, think and speak as he pleases. When he becomes a mem-
ber of society he necessarily surrenders a portion of that
liberty in the interest of the rights of others and the welfare
of society. The modicum of liberty remaining after such
surrender is civil or political liberty. An act of the Legis-
lature in the interest of the health, morals or safety of the
community operates within the field of the surrendered rights
and does not abridge civil liberty. If, then, the statute for-
bidding the relator to employ in his candy factory minors
under a certain age and women more than fifty-four hours
a week is a measure in the interest of the welfare of society,
it does not impair his civil liberty, although it does limit his
right to contract for labor. I find this decided already by
authority and, fully and sympathetically concurring in the
reason by which the result was reached, follow the precedents.
The development of the industrial life of the nation, the
pressure of women and children entering the industrial field
in competition with men physically better qualified for the
244
FIFTY-FOUR HOUR LAW
struggle, has compelled them to submit to conditions and
terms of service which it cannot be presumed they would
freely choose. Their liberty to contract to sell their labor
may be but another name for involuntary service created by
existing industrial conditions. A law which restrains the
liberty to contract may tend to emancipate them by enabling
them to act as they choose and not as competitive conditions
compel. All these considerations are for the Legislature, and
for the Legislature alone. It is only where the statute con-
trols conduct in matters plainly and obviously indifferent to
the welfare of the public, or any portion thereof, that the
courts can pronounce the act violative of civil liberty. Cer-
tainly this is not such a case.
The writ is dismissed and the relator remanded to custody.
245
APPENDIX C
LAW ENACTED MARCH, 191 3, PRO-
HIBITING NIGHT WORK FOR
ALL WOMEN
An Act to amend the labor law, in relation to protecting the
health and morals of females employed in factories by
providing an adequate period of rest at night.
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate
and Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section i . Chapter thirty-six of the laws of nineteen hun-
dred and nine, entitled "An Act relating to labor, being chap-
ter thirty-one of the consolidated laws," is hereby amended
by inserting therein, after section ninety-three-a, a new sec-
tion, to be section ninety-three-b, to read as follows:
93-b. Period of rest at night for women. In order to pro-
tect the health and morals of females employed in factories
by providing an adequate period of rest at night no woman
shall be employed or permitted to work in any factory in this
state before six o'clock in the morning or after ten o'clock
in the evening of any day.
Section 2. This act shall take effect July first, nineteen
hundred and thirteen.
246
APPENDIX D
SOCIETY FOR APPRENTICES, PARIS,
FRANCE
Societe -pour V assistance Paternelle aux Enfants Employes
dans les Industries des Fleurs et des Plumes, Paris.
With the growth of the floral industry in the middle of the
19th century, employers found themselves in need of appren-
tices and formed in 1 866 the above named society. It is a de-
pendency of the employer's syndicate and "undertakes to place,
free of charge, in apprenticeship, with a regular contract,
children whom their families want to have profit by the
advantages of the society. All its efforts tend to the morali-
zation and perfecting of this apprenticeship, and lay stress
on oversight and encouragement."
The object of the society is to assure a good trade appren-
ticeship and to look after, help and influence for good by all
means that it esteems useful, children employed as appren-
tices in the flower and feather industries.
Its methods are the following:
a. The placing in apprenticeship of children under the
oversight and protection of delegates of the society.
b. The development of trade efficiency by means of com-
petitive trade contests.
c. The holding of free classes in elementary instruction
and design, open to all flower and feather apprentices (lend-
ing library for home use).
d. The awarding of honorary prizes to teachers, heads of
houses, foremen, forewomen, workers and apprentices, and
all others who help the society in its task.
e. The maintenance of family groups (private boarding
247
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
houses) which assure board, lodging and necessary care to
young girls, whose parents or employers cannot provide these.
f. A yearly prize day for the distribution of savings bank
books and books to the winners of the various competitions.
g. And all other methods which the experience or inclina-
tion of members may sugges'.
Contract.
Between the undersigned:
i st. Mr Address
engaged in the profession of
2nd. The minor born in
the has obtained her school certifi-
cate on represented in the contract by
Mr Address
who serves as
The following agreement has been made:
Art. I . Mr agrees to take the
undersigned girl as apprentice and to keep her during
consecutive years beginning
and ending
Art. II. To teach her during this time the trade of
freely and fully in such a way that she will
be able to practice this trade at the end of her apprenticeship;
never to employ her for any other work but that of her pro-
fession; neither for frequent or distant errands nor for the
carrying of heavy burdens. To act in conformity with arti-
cles 2, 3,4, 5, 10, 1 1, and 14, of the law of November 2nd, 1892,
"on the work of children, minor girls and women in industrial
employment."
Art. III. To provide her with necessary tools.
Art. IV. To keep her conduct and habits under constant
supervision, to treat her gently, like a good father (un bon
pere de famille) avoiding all corporal punishment or priva-
tion of food.
Art. V. To help her to fulfil her family duties, by allow-
ing her to go out on Sundays and Holidays after an agreement
with parents or guardian as to hours.
248
PROTECTION OF APPRENTICES
Art. VI. To accept the supervision of persons authorized
by the society; to inform them of serious faults of which
the apprentice may be guilty, and, in the case of serious com-
plaint, immediately to notify delegates of the society and the
parents. To notify the latter immediately in the event of
the illness of the apprentice, who shall be given all necessary
care until she can be sent to her family.
Art. VII. To allow her to take part in the yearly trade
competition organized by the "Assistance Paternelle des
Fleurs et des Plumes," and to provide her with materials neces-
sary for these competitions. There may be no forfeiture of
this article, except by previous contract between the manu-
facturer and the Executive Council.
Art. VIII. On the other hand, the apprentice agrees,
during the time fixed above, to receive with attention, re-
spect, and docility, the lessons and orders of her master, and
to make up all loss of time to him at the end of her appren-
ticeship, whether such loss arises from illness or any other
cause, provided it exceeds a fortnight in duration.
Art. IX. The representative of the apprentice promises
for his part to use his authority to keep the latter in her
workroom until the date of expiration of the contract and to
make her hard working, docile, and devoted to the interests
of Mr and faithful in the execution
of the regulations of the society.
He consents besides to allow her to be under the oversight
of the society's delegates [here to be indicated the other obliga-
tions of the employer or of the apprentice's representative,
for food, care, or any other condition; also any particular
provisions which the parties may wish to state in the contract,
especially conditions of payment].
Additional Provisions.
In the present act has intervened Mr ,
Delegate of the Society, acting in his own name, by virtue of
the powers that have been specially conferred upon him by
the Executive Council, to declare that the Assistance Pater-
nelle takes under its protection the young
who is required from this day to enjoy all the advantages,
resulting from present or future statutes and regulations.
249
ARTIFICIAL FLOWER MAKERS
The representative of the society, in common accord with
the parties, agrees to oversee the legal execution of the present
contract; they are entitled to inform themselves of the prog-
ress of the apprentice's work, as stated in Art. VI.
The contracting parties promise, in case of disputed points,
to have recourse to the arbitration of persons whom the
society may name for the purpose, before taking legal action.
In case of non-agreement, the society will use its influence
on the side of every effort to fulfil the present contract,
although it can never in any respect incur legal responsi-
bility for the same.
No forfeiture may be stipulated by the present act.
In the case where, on the part of master or apprentice,
there may be reason for the canceling of the contract, the
Conseil des Prud'hommes de la Seine (section des tissus) has
the sole right to fix the damages that may result from such
canceling. (The first two months of apprenticeship are con-
sidered as a trial period during which the contract may be
annulled by the will of either party. In this case no indem-
nity will be allowed on either side. Art. XIV of the law of
1 85 1 on Apprenticeship Contracts.)
The present contract is not valid unless signed by the
above named delegate and by the president of the society.
One copy shall be placed in the records of the society.
Three copies made in Paris on and
signed after reading:
Employer.
Apprentice's Representative
Delegate President.
250
INDEX
INDEX
Age of Home Workers, ioo-
103
Age of Shop Workers: in all
manufacturing industries, in
flower making, and other
specified industries, 25, 26;
in flower and feather trade
in United States, 1880- 19 10,
4; school, age at leaving,
203-205; under sixteen, 23-
27
Apprentices and Learners in
New York: attitude of em-
ployers, 191, 197, 198; atti-
tude of older workers, 199;
cheap work and "green
hands," 191, 192; group sys-
tem in shops, 192-194; home
work before going into shop,
196; manufacturers willing
to take learners, number,
198; reasons for choosing the
flower trade, 200-205 ; school,
age at leaving, 203-205;
school classes, attitude of
employers and workers, 205-
212; specialization of differ-
ent processes, 194-196; uni-
formity of method lacking,
191; wages, 192, 194, 196,
199
Apprentices and Learners in
Paris: convent classes, 185;
cost, to girl, in time and
money, 147, 155; evening
class of independent work-
ers, experiment, 188, 189;
four ways of learning the
trade, 183; parental instruc-
tion, 189; sub-contractor
system, 185-188; tradeschool
classes, 184; wages, 186
Association of Flower Manu-
facturers, 198
Austrians: in the flower trade,
28, 29
Baltimore : number of women in
the trade, 7
Bohemians: in the flower trade,
28, 29
Branching: distinct department
in the factory, 20, 2 1 ; most
remunerative work, 63 ; most
skilled work in the trade, 17;
one of three processes of
flower making, 15; wages
paid, 64
Chagot, T.: manufacturer in
New York in 1840, 3
Chicago: number of women in
the trade, 1905, 7
Children: ages and grades in
public schools attended, 102,
103; ages of home workers,
100, 10 1 ; evil effect of home-
work system, 103, 213; home
workers, 94-107; labor law
does not touch home work-
ers, 100; number employed
under sixteen, 1880-1910, 4;
Paris, absence of child labor,
169; prohibition of employ-
ment, legislative possibili-
ties, 222; relation of their
work to earning power of
253
NDEX
family, 107; shop workers,
25-27; youngest child workei
eighteen months old, 10 1
Chinese: makers of artificial
flowers, 1
Cost of Living: in Paris, 164-
167
Designing of Flowers: impor-
tance, to success of firm, 17-
19; wages paid, 64
Dressmaking: New York, num-
ber of women employed, by
ages, 25, 26; Paris, wages,
166, 167
Dyeing: color charts from Paris,
14; French superiority, 146,
1 56; physical effects of dye,
131; task of the dyer, 15;
wages paid, 64
Earnings. See IV ages
Egyptians: makers of artificial
flowers, 1
Employers' Syndicate of Paris,
186
England: introduction of flower
making, 2
Factory Laws. See Law Con-
cerning Labor
Fami li es. See Home Conditions;
Home Workers
Fathers. See Parents
Fatigue: caused by long periods
of work, 131
Feather Flowers, 2
Feather Trade: census figures,
1850, 1870, 1880 to 1910, 3-
6; combined with flower
trade, 2-6; concentration in
New York, 6; decrease, ap-
parent, 1900-1905, 5; fancy
feather manufacture, 53; in-
crease in 19 10, due to wil-
low plumes, 6; location of
shops in New York, 8; num-
ber of establishments, 1880-
1910, 4-6; number of women
employed, in United States,
4-6; objections to trade, 54,
55; relation to the flower
trade, 11-13, 52-55; relation
to the millinery trade, 1 1 ;
two branches, 1 1 ; wages, 61 ;
willow plumes and the de-
pression of trade by the
home-work system, 218, 219
Firms. See Manufacturers
Flower Makers' Union, New
York, 36
Flower Making: art turned
into a trade, 13; color af-
fected by speed of work, 145;
color charts, 14; difference
between the workers in
Paris and New York, 189;
divisions of work, 15; early
times, 1; introduction into
United States by French
immigrants, 2; materials
used, 14, 155; models, 17-19;
most beautiful roses in the
world, 1 54; processes in New
York, 14-17; processes in
Paris, 152, 155-159; secret
of flower making, 155, 158,
1 59; specializing in the work-
room, 20-22; speed of work,
as shown in quality of flow-
ers, 145; tools used, 14, 15
Flower Trade: beginnings in
France, 1 50; census figures,
1850, 1870, 1880-1910, 3-6;
combined with feather trade,
2-6; concentration in New
York, 6; craftsmanship not
encouraged, 39; decrease, ap-
parent, 1900- 1905, 5; fac-
tory industry, with its evils,
1, 20-22; future trade de-
pends upon skill of workers,
214; location of establish-
ments in New York, 8, 91;
254
INDEX
nationality of workers, 23,
28-35; number of establish-
ments, 1 880- 19 1 0,4-6; num-
ber of women employed, 4-
6, 23-27, 40, by ages, 25, 26;
Parisian, 144-190; Parisian,
investigation by E. S. Ser-
geant, 148; reasons for
women choosing the trade,
200-205 ; relation to feather
trade, 11-13, 52-55; rela-
tion to millinery trade, 8, 1 1,
43, 215; school classes, at-
titude of employers and
workers, 205-2 1 2 ; success de-
pends upon work of design-
ing, 17-19; summary of con-
ditions, 213-224; uncertain
conditions of trade, effect of,
18-20, 215-217
Flowers and Plants: for deco-
ration, 8, 9
Foliage Making : wages paid, 64
Foreigners: in the flower trade,
23,28-35, 115
French: introduced flower mak-
ing into United States, 2;
learned flower making from
Italy, 2. See also Paris
Germans: in the flower trade, 23,
29,31.32
Goffering: process, 15; wages,
64
Hand Worker: has no mechan-
ical rival, 1
Home Conditions: "breaking"
family of the flower worker,
79; children, dependent, 78;
contributors to the family
income, 75-78; fathers' occu-
pations and wages, 75, 76;
few women board or live
alone, 74; housework respon-
sibilities, 84-86; location of
homes near shops, 74; mar-
ried women in the shops, 74;
mothers as wage-earners,
77; overcrowding in the
home, 83, 139; Paris, cost of
living and attractiveness of
homes, 164-168; persons per
room, 139; rent paid month-
ly, 84; starving conditions
mean starvation wages, 72;
stories told by the flower
makers, 80-82, 86; wage-
earners other than the flower
makers, 75-78
Home-Work System: conditions
of employment a menace to
standardsof work and wages,
89; evil effect of, on stand-
ards of industry, and on
children, 93, 94, 99, 100, 103;
exploitation of childhood
and of the unskilled, 213;
failure of New York state to
deal successfully with the
problem, 136-138; greatest
enemy of artistic work, 218;
legal regulation, 178; growth
fostered by increasing neces-
sity that wives become wage-
earners, 116, 117; legis-
lative prohibition would im-
prove conditions, 222-224;
Paris, 168-179; spread of,
due to changes in nationality,
30; wage scale depressed by
system, 218, 219; willow
plume making and the de-
pression of trade, 218, 219
Home Workers in New York:
bargaining, effect of, on liv-
ing conditions, 1 1 1 ; chil-
dren's labor, 94-107; chil-
dren's work, relation of, to
earning power of family, 1 07;
contributors to the family
income, 114; families de-
scribed, representative of
the group, 94-99; grade of
255
INDEX
work given out, 90; length of
time at work, 1 14; names
and addresses in department
of labor, 91 ; neighborhood in
which workers live, 92; no
connection with feather
trade, 12; number in the
trade, 90; persons per room,
in families, 139; resource for
employers in busy season,
57; shop workers' evening
work, 134-136; summary of
conditions in the home, 99;
sweated industry, 22; under
sixteen years of age, nearly
one half, 100; wages, 95-99,
104-108; wages tend down-
ward, opinions and expe-
riences of workers, 109-1 1 1 ;
weekly earnings of families
by number in each family,
106; youngest child worker
eighteen months old, 101.
See also Home Conditions
Home Workers in Paris: ex-
pert work, 168; hours, 177;
number, 150; unreliability,
159; wages, 171-177
Hours of Labor: daily hours of
work, when not working
overtime, 124; fifty-four-
hour law passed in 1912,
121-123; leaving time, when
not working overtime, 125;
letter written by Italian
Girls' Industrial League,
122; nine-hour day, 122;
noon recess, 126; opening
time for shops, 124; over-
time, legal and illegal, 128;
overtime, violations of the
law, 129-13 1 ; Paris, 177,
178; weekly hours of work,
when not working overtime,
1 2 7. See al so / rregularity of
Employment
Hungarians: in the flower trade,
28, 29
Imported Flowers and Feath-
ers: value, 144
Inspection: of tenement house
conditions, 137-140
Instruction. See Apprentices
and Learners; School Classes
Irish: in the flower trade, 29, 31,
Irregularity of Employment,
40-57; fluctuations in num-
ber of women employed
during year, 40, 43 ; length of
time women employed in
latest positions, 46; manu-
facturers make no effort to
lengthen seasons of employ-
ment, 56; Parisian workers,
161; part time, 43; reasons
for leaving positions, 49;
reasons for short seasons,
43; relation of flower and
feather seasons, 53-55; sea-
sons vary in different shops,
47, 48; time lost in year
preceding date of interview,
50, 51; uncertainty of fash-
ion and its effect, 215-217.
See also Hours
Ita
Ita
Ita
lian Girls' Industrial
League: letter sent to New
York legislature when labor
bill was pending, 122
lians: attitude toward their
work, 34, 35; changed the
class of v/ork, 23; cheapen
the trade and drive out other
nationalities, 23, 29, 30; con-
centration in a few trades,
33; foster growth of home-
work system, 116; number
by nativity of parents and
general occupations, 3 1 ; un-
derbid the standard wage,
30, 67; wages compared with
those of other nationalities,
67-69
ly: introduced flower making
into France, 2
256
INDEX
Jews: attempts to organize trade
union, 36; attitude toward
their work, 34, 35; changed
the class of work, 23
Labor Unions. See Trade
Unionism
Law Concerning Labor: chil-
dren, employment of, 123;
does not establish definite
standard of air tests or light-
ing, 120; fails to control child
labor among home workers,
100; home work and the
failure of the licensing sys-
tem, 137, 140, 141; hours of
work of women and children,
121-123; licensing of tene-
ment house manufacture,
failure of real protection to
consumer, 137, 140, 141;
lunch period, 126; minimum
wage board suggested, 222;
overtime, legal and illegal,
128; overtime, violations of
the law, 129—13 1, 134; Paris,
178; possibilities of legisla-
tive action, 221-224; pro-
hibition of home work ad-
vocated, 223; rest period at
night, declared unconstitu-
tional, 123; tenement-made
articles, list of, 137; viola-
tions of hours of labor, 129-
134; violations of laws re-
stricting employment of
women and children, 133
Learners. See Apprentices and
Learners
Leaves: making, 16
Leaving of Positions: reasons,
49
Loss of Time. See Time
Manufacturers: association,
198; attitude toward learn-
ers, 191, 197, 198; attitude
toward trade classes, 206;
lists to be furnished to de-
partment of labor, 91 ; New
York, in 1840, 3; number of
firms investigated, 90; Paris
contractors, 153-160; spe-
cialization of work in Paris,
145, 146; violations of laws
restricting employment of
women and children, 133
Married Women: Parisian home
workers, 169, 170; propor-
tion in the shops, 74, 81;
wives as wage-earners, 116,
117. See also Parents
Men in the Flower Trade:
number, 4-6; tasks more re-
munerative than those of
women, 63; wages, 61, 63
Milhaud, Caroline: French in-
vestigator of flower trade,
148
Millinery Trade: conditions,
9-1 1 ; number of women em-
ployed, 10, 11, by ages, 25,
26; relation to the flower
trade, 8, 1 1, 43, 215
Models for Flower Making,
17-19, 144, 154, 156
Mothers. See Parents
Nationality: among flower
makers, 23, 28-35; among
all women wage-earners, 3 1 ;
as a factor in variation of
wages, 67-69
New York: location of shops, 8,
91 ; most important center of
flower and feather trade, 6
Occupations: of contributors to
the family income other than
the flower workers, 75-78
Overcrowding: in flower mak-
ers' homes, 83, 139
257
INDEX
Overtime: home work is over-
time, 134; legal and illegal,
128; violations of the law,
129—13 1
Paper Box Making: number of
women employed, by ages,
25, 26
Parents: length of residence in
United States of parents of
home workers, 115; nativity
of parents of shop workers,
29-31; occupations and
wages of fathers in families
doing home work, 112, 113;
occupations of, of shop work-
ers, 75-78; wages of, of shop
workers, 75-78
Paris Flower Trade: appren-
ticeship system, 147, 148,
155, 183-190; beginnings of
flower trade, 150, 151; center
of flower industry, 149; child
labor, absence of, 169; cost
of living, 164-167; distinc-
tive features of the flower
trade, 220; dyeing of flowers,
146, 156; Employers' Syndi-
cate, 1 86; flower trade among
better paid occupations, 220;
home-work system, 158, 168-
179; homes, attractiveness,
168; hours of labor, 177, 178;
investigation by E. S. Ser-
geant, 148; irregularity of
employment, 161 ; legal regu-
lation, 178; married women
in trade, 169, 170; models
for flowers, 144, 154, 156;
most beautiful roses in the
world, 154; number in the
trade, 150; processes, 152-
158; seasons, 161; shop con-
ditions, 153-160; specializa-
tion of work, 145, 146, 152;
superiority of French flow-
ers, 23, 144-146; trade union-
ism, 179-182; wages, 162-
164, 167, 17I-I77. 186;
wages, compared with Amer-
ican, 145, 147
Payment for Work. See Wages
Persons per Room: in families
of home workers, 139
Philadelphia : numberof women
in the trade, 1905, 7
Piece Work: wages, 59, 64, 170,
171
Positions: length of time em-
ployed in latest, 46; reasons
for leaving, 49
Preparing Flowers, 15
Processes. See Flower Making
Rent: paid by families of flower
makers, 84
Romans: makers of artificial
flowers, 1
Russians: in the flower trade,
28, 29, 31, 32
School Attendance: age of
women at time of leaving
school, 203-205; ages and
grades of children attending
school, 102, 103
School Classes: in flower mak-
ing, attitude of employers
and workers, 205-212; opin-
ion of school official, 221;
Paris schools, 184
Seasons: effect of, on personnel
of workroom force, 217;
length of, as affected by
fashion, 19, 20; length of
busy season, 41; length of
slack season, 42; manufac-
turers make no effort to
lengthen seasons of employ-
ment, 56; months of begin-
ning and ending of busy
seasons, 45; Paris, 161 ; rela-
tion of flower and feather
seasons, 53-5 5; short seasons,
reasons for, 43; variation in
258
INDEX
different shops and from
season to season, 47, 48
Sergeant, Elizabeth S.: in-
vestigation of Parisian flower
trade, 148
Shell Flowers, 2
Shop Workers in New York:
ages of women employed, 25,
26; attitude of girls of differ-
ent races toward the trade,
37~39»" children, 25-27; con-
ditions of trade afford no
encouragement to crafts-
manship, 39; foreigners in
the trade, 23, 28; home work
at night, 134-136; Italians,
predominance of, 31-34;
Jewish girl, 34-37; majority
under 25 years of age, 24;
nativity of parents, 28-31;
trade union, attempt to
organize, 36; young girls,
large proportion, 23, 24, 27
Shop Workers in Paris, 152-
160; hours, 178; number,
150; seasons, 161; wages,
162, 163
Standards of Living: lowered
by underbidding of Italian
women, 67-69; married
women's employment, effect
of, 117; must be measured
with reference to trade con-
ditions and family require-
ments, 72, 73 ; overcrowding
in the home, 83; undermined
by low wages and unem-
ployment, 58
Statistics (Tables): ages and
grades attended in schools of
children making flowers, 102;
ages of home workers, 100,
1 1 1 ; ages of women em-
ployed in New York, 25, 26;
daily earnings of Parisian
women, 173; flower and
feather trade, 1850, 1870,
1880 to 1 9 10, 3-6; hours of
Parisian home workers, 177;
irregularity of employment,
40; leaving positions, rea-
sons, 49; length of residence
in United States of foreign-
born parents of home work-
ers, 115; length of seasons,
41, 42; manufacturers, num-
ber of, in New York, in 1840,
3; monthly earnings of Pa-
risian home worker, 174,
>7?, 177; months of begin-
ning and ending of busy
season, 45; nativity of par-
ents of flower makers, 29, 3 1 ;
number of women employed
in United States, 1880-19 10,
4-6, by ages, in New York,
25, 26; occupations of fa-
thers in families doing home
work, 113; Paris, number in
the trade, 150; rent paid
monthly by families, 84;
time for which women were
employed in latest positions,
46; time lost in year preced-
ing date of interview, 50, 51;
wages of I alian women and
of other nationalities, 69;
weekly earnings of families
from home work, 106; week-
ly maximum wages, 59;
weekly wages, by process
and method of payment, 64;
weekly wages, by years of
employment, 65; weekly
wages of learners in New
York, 199; weekly wages of
men and women, 61, 62;
women wage-earners by na-
tivity of parents and general
occupations, New York,
1900, 31; yearly earnings of
Parisian home workers, 172
Summary of Conditions: in the
flower trade, 213-224
Teaching Girls the Trade.
See Apprentices and Learners;
School Classes
259
INDEX
Tenement Manufacture:: ad-
dresses of tenements licensed
for home work published,
9 1 ; conditions in homes, 1 38,
139; failure in protection to
consumer, 137, 140, 141; in-
spection, 137-140; list of
tenement-made articles, 137;
number of licensed tene-
ments, 141
Time : length of time employed in
latest positions, 46; loss due
to part time, 44; lost time in
year preceding date of inter-
view, 50, 51; part time, 43;
weekly wages by years of
employment, 65
Tools: used in flower making, 14,
15
Trade Classes. See School
Classes
Trade Unionism: attempts of
Jewish girls to organize a
union, 36; Paris, 179-182;
workers have never suc-
ceeded in organizing a union,
218
Unemployment. See Irregular-
ity of Employment
Violation of the Law: hours of
labor, 129-134; restricting
employment of women and
children, 133
Wages of Home Workers, New
York, 95-99, 104-108; bar-
gaining, effect of, in ; com-
parison with wages of shop
workers, 107, 108; home-
work system depresses wage
scale, 218, 219; relation of
work of children to earning
power of family, 107; tend-
ency is downward, expe-
riences and opinions of work-
ers, 1 09— 111; weekly earn-
ings of families by number in
each family, 106; yearly in-
comes, 108, 109
Wages of Home Workers*
Paris, 171-177; monthly
earnings, 174, 175, 177;
yearly earnings, 172
Wages of Men: in flower trade,
61,63
Wages of Parents, 75-78, 112,
113
Wages of Shop Workers, New
York: average wage of all
workers, 217; comparative
weekly earnings of women
and men, 61, 63 ; comparison
with wages of home workers,
107, 108; factors influencing
wages, 88; fixing of wage a
matter of chance, 67; Italian
women's wages compared
with wages of women of
other nationalities, 68, 69;
learners in New York, 192,
194, 196, 199; maximum
weekly wages, 59; nation-
ality as a factor in wage
variation, 67-69; number of
women employed where
maximum weekly wage paid
was as specified, 59; pay-
ment for different processes,
64; piece work, 59, 64; pro-
portion of women in flower
wage groups compared with
proportion of women in wage
groups in all industries, 61;
rate determined by fore-
woman's guess, 67; reduc-
tion in dull weeks, 44; stand-
ard wages determine stand-
ard of living, 73; standards
unrecognized, 218; stories
told by flower makers, 80-
82, 86; time work, 59, 64;
underbidding of Italian
women, 30; weekly earnings,
61, 62; weekly wages for dif-
260
INDEX
ferent processes, time work
and piece work, 64; weekly
wages by years of employ-
ment, 65, 66; yearly income
for all occupations, 70-72
Wages of Shop Workers, Paris,
162-164; apprentices, 186;
comparison of flower trade
with other trades, 167; com-
parison with America, 145,
147; daily earnings of home
workers, 173; piece work,
171
Wenzel, Joseph: first flower
manufacturer in France, 1 50
West Hoboken, New Jersey:
number of women in the
trade, 1905, 7
Willow Plumes. See Feather
Trade
Workrooms: conditions in New
York, 119, 120, 131; condi-
tions in Paris, 153-160; dif-
ferences in organization, 20-
22
Young Girls: in the trade, large
proportion, 23-27
261
THE'
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